When you've just cycled, very likely you don't have enough food for the size CUCs most sellers offer. Most will starve.
Instead---get a couple of snails---ceriths are good---and watch their behavior. Or a couple of micro-hermits, the sort that never get a significantly large claw, never grow larger than a snail shell will accommodate. And when you get crabs, get a fistfull of shells JUST LIKE the shell they're wearing, only larger, if you can. It's only humane. And little crabs are fussy: most pick only one type of shell, ever. If you're very lucky you may have acquired a strange snail from your live rock: the stomatella---long antennae, only a hard 'saddle' for a shell, and move fast. Real nice snail! You almost never see them for sale. You may also accidentally acquire limpets (round cone with hole in top, very small) and chitons (kind of a skeleton like a sowbug, often with a black 'cape that covers most of it: they're nocturnal and hate light, so it's rare you'll see them. Never try to move one: you'll hurt it. Abalones are also good.
Watch their behavior until you're sure they're happy and ok.
Then you can, every week for the 4 weeks your first fish spends in qt, get a few more. Get ceriths, mostly. Turbos sound nice, but they're not adapted to sand beds and frequently get out on the sand, fall over, and helplessly starve to death if a crab doesn't decide they're fair game that way...they're kind of like vultures, and won't turn down a dying meal. Bristleworms are good. Most kind of worms are good, and if you're lucky they came in your rock---just don't handle them without gloves, or their spines will make your fingers unhappy. Sponges are good, but don't buy one. Your tank may have 'wild' ones, but you're not really stable enough yet.
You are not stable enough for an anemone and won't be for most of a year. You COULD get a few discosoma mushrooms. But you can wait.
Go on increasing the crew for your four weeks. All ceriths, if you can manage it. Scarlet hermits are good. Hardy, long-lived.
After you have had fish for 2 months in the tank. You will need 2 large nassarius per 20 gallons. Or quite a few smaller ones. They live under the sand. You can get one fighting conch per 50 gallons, no smaller tank. These creatures maintain your sandbed.
Do not get a sand-sifting goby or an anemone until your tank has been up and running well for a few months. The goby will starve. The anemone may not settle and could kill the tank.
Avoid arrow crabs: they do in your bristleworms and contribute nothing useful.
Avoid cucumbers and starfish (except the brittle stars: they're good) Avoid the green serpent star, which is a fish predator. Otherwise the cucumbers are going to starve and the starfish won't be safe with any corals and will probably starve after a month. Avoid margarita snails---pretty, but will die quickly in warm water. Avoid coral banded shrimp: they may take after your fish. Avoid cleaner shrimp in a tank under 75 gallons...they can pick on your fish. Peppermint shrimp, however, eat aiptasia---at least some do. Not all. Hit and miss.
Confine your CUC to worms, cerith snails, micro-hermits like the scarlet. And increase their numbers slowly. Ceriths will breed in your tank. Crabs--alas, their young don't survive. If you like, you can get an urchin, late in the 4 weeks: the pincushion urchin does the least rock-pushing
I will add one snail that is my favorite: variously called the dove snail or the conch-shaped miniature strombus grazer, related to the conch, I think, but about a third of an inch long. These tiny snails get where others can't and clean like bandits. They never fall over---they spin a spidersilk line to get from one rock to another, and they multiply like bandits.
They also are of a size to get into places like the inside of your pump, but it rarely happens. If you do have a pump not working the way it did once, disassemble, extract snail, reassemble, piece of cake. Not a big enough nuisance for me to give up these prolific little fellows. If your fish store has them, they'll often just give them to a good customer. At very least, they're cheap.
Hitchhikers like hairy crabs, or smooth crabs with a distinct largish claw, are not good. Neither are worms with tentacles on their heads. Nor are clicking sounds from your tank, which indicates a pistol shrimp or worse, a mantis shrimp. Either shrimp is great in a dedicated mantis tank, but they kill fish. And I include the happy little pistols sold as pairs with gobies---my tiger grew large, prosperous, killed his goby partner, then took out several firefish and a mandarin before I took my tank apart to catch a stupid half-inch shrimp.
If you find anything else---ask. If it's watery, most of us have been there, done that, and can tell you, eg, that scallops will die, and rescuing a grocery store oyster will not end well. So also with more exotic creatures that turn up on sale.
Instead---get a couple of snails---ceriths are good---and watch their behavior. Or a couple of micro-hermits, the sort that never get a significantly large claw, never grow larger than a snail shell will accommodate. And when you get crabs, get a fistfull of shells JUST LIKE the shell they're wearing, only larger, if you can. It's only humane. And little crabs are fussy: most pick only one type of shell, ever. If you're very lucky you may have acquired a strange snail from your live rock: the stomatella---long antennae, only a hard 'saddle' for a shell, and move fast. Real nice snail! You almost never see them for sale. You may also accidentally acquire limpets (round cone with hole in top, very small) and chitons (kind of a skeleton like a sowbug, often with a black 'cape that covers most of it: they're nocturnal and hate light, so it's rare you'll see them. Never try to move one: you'll hurt it. Abalones are also good.
Watch their behavior until you're sure they're happy and ok.
Then you can, every week for the 4 weeks your first fish spends in qt, get a few more. Get ceriths, mostly. Turbos sound nice, but they're not adapted to sand beds and frequently get out on the sand, fall over, and helplessly starve to death if a crab doesn't decide they're fair game that way...they're kind of like vultures, and won't turn down a dying meal. Bristleworms are good. Most kind of worms are good, and if you're lucky they came in your rock---just don't handle them without gloves, or their spines will make your fingers unhappy. Sponges are good, but don't buy one. Your tank may have 'wild' ones, but you're not really stable enough yet.
You are not stable enough for an anemone and won't be for most of a year. You COULD get a few discosoma mushrooms. But you can wait.
Go on increasing the crew for your four weeks. All ceriths, if you can manage it. Scarlet hermits are good. Hardy, long-lived.
After you have had fish for 2 months in the tank. You will need 2 large nassarius per 20 gallons. Or quite a few smaller ones. They live under the sand. You can get one fighting conch per 50 gallons, no smaller tank. These creatures maintain your sandbed.
Do not get a sand-sifting goby or an anemone until your tank has been up and running well for a few months. The goby will starve. The anemone may not settle and could kill the tank.
Avoid arrow crabs: they do in your bristleworms and contribute nothing useful.
Avoid cucumbers and starfish (except the brittle stars: they're good) Avoid the green serpent star, which is a fish predator. Otherwise the cucumbers are going to starve and the starfish won't be safe with any corals and will probably starve after a month. Avoid margarita snails---pretty, but will die quickly in warm water. Avoid coral banded shrimp: they may take after your fish. Avoid cleaner shrimp in a tank under 75 gallons...they can pick on your fish. Peppermint shrimp, however, eat aiptasia---at least some do. Not all. Hit and miss.
Confine your CUC to worms, cerith snails, micro-hermits like the scarlet. And increase their numbers slowly. Ceriths will breed in your tank. Crabs--alas, their young don't survive. If you like, you can get an urchin, late in the 4 weeks: the pincushion urchin does the least rock-pushing
I will add one snail that is my favorite: variously called the dove snail or the conch-shaped miniature strombus grazer, related to the conch, I think, but about a third of an inch long. These tiny snails get where others can't and clean like bandits. They never fall over---they spin a spidersilk line to get from one rock to another, and they multiply like bandits.
They also are of a size to get into places like the inside of your pump, but it rarely happens. If you do have a pump not working the way it did once, disassemble, extract snail, reassemble, piece of cake. Not a big enough nuisance for me to give up these prolific little fellows. If your fish store has them, they'll often just give them to a good customer. At very least, they're cheap.
Hitchhikers like hairy crabs, or smooth crabs with a distinct largish claw, are not good. Neither are worms with tentacles on their heads. Nor are clicking sounds from your tank, which indicates a pistol shrimp or worse, a mantis shrimp. Either shrimp is great in a dedicated mantis tank, but they kill fish. And I include the happy little pistols sold as pairs with gobies---my tiger grew large, prosperous, killed his goby partner, then took out several firefish and a mandarin before I took my tank apart to catch a stupid half-inch shrimp.
If you find anything else---ask. If it's watery, most of us have been there, done that, and can tell you, eg, that scallops will die, and rescuing a grocery store oyster will not end well. So also with more exotic creatures that turn up on sale.
Last edited:
