hi guys,


I need some advice with my 150g saltwater.



What do you guys recommend for a detritus clean up crew.



This is what I have currently:

10 red legged hermit crabs

5 turbo astrea snails

10 nassarius snails

2 emerald crabs

1 cleaner shrimp

1 coral banded shrimp

1 fire shrimp

1 long spined sea urchin

1 sea hare

1 sand sifting star

1 serpent star

1 linka star and

3 clams.



This is not nearly enough to clean all the waste.



I even added 2-1200gph powerheads and 1-800gph powerhead



to push all the waste to overflow.



But I'm maybe thinking to change to 2-3000gph powerheads.



Or should I double or triple my inverts.



I'm stuck on this because I am not seeing the red coraline



I need for corals.



Any advise would be appreciated.



Thanks.

I'd double or even triple your clean up crew..... as far as your lack of coraline algae..... Are you using magnesium and strontium supplements? Have you checked your calcium levels? I use a couple different supplements for my calcium buffering.... Agra-milk and purple up. I have thick plate-like coraline algae all over my live rock....

Also be careful how much flow you have in your tank.... especially when housing corals... I use 2 koralia 4's (1200 gph) and a powerhead 802 (600 gph) in my 180 gallon tank.

id personally go with alot of snails, for my 50 gallon breeder, I will probably be getting about 100-120 snails for my tank, I will be getting a variety of snails, and ill be getting 3 emeralds, and 3 peppermints. I have a few blue legged hermits now, but they have killed most of my snails, so im trying to steer away from the crabs. I also have a red linkia, 2 serpent stars, and a CBS.

As for flow, my tank is mostly SPS, I have a 600gph return, and a vortech powerhead, once the new sand gets bacteria built up on it, im going to crank it up more, but right now its sitting at about 1000gph

I am going to leave my flow where it is for now.



And I am going to triple my inverts as well.



Also I am using magnesium and all my levels are



checked daily including calcium.What we were



recently suggested was to increase our water



change out to 10% a week.Hopefully that helps as well.



Thanks to both of you for your advise.

I actually strongly disagree with the posts above with flow. Our 180gal was VERY happy with two 1200gph Koralia4s, a vortech mp20 (2000gph), a tunze 6105 (3400gph), and over 3000gph of return flow... over 10,000gph of surging, turbulent flow in 180gal display. I'm fond of SPS though... so my critters would be happier in much strongly flow then softies/LPS tanks.

Clean up crews can consume waste/detritus, but they don't actually REMOVE it. When people add hundreds of snails, etc... sure the snails consume stuff, but at those numbers they eventually start starving/dying, and all of that pollution that each snail consumes is released (in a slightly different form) right back in the water. It's never actually removed, just tied up to resurface later. If you increase flow where detritus is building up, you can keep it in the water column for your skimmer to remove.

Today I'm going to pick up a 100gpd RO system and will find out more about my flow.


Right now I have 2 Koralia 4s- 1200gph each and 1 Koralia 3- 800gph.I really do think I want to add



2 Vortech MP40s -3000gph each and remove the koralia powerheads.But it all depends I think on what type of



corals I am going to put in my tank as well. I think as far as my inverts I am going to leave the same until



I get the proper flow.



One other thing I have 70lbs of live rock now and want to add another 70lbs of live rock and branches.I see so



many different types of live rock,is there a preference you guys have or could recommend?



Thanks

I'm very fond of pukani. It's extremely porous (ALOT of surface area and doesn't way a ton) and gives lots of spots for wedging frag plugs into.

I've also got some fiji and tonga in my tank... it's a bit of a free-for-all :) I'd buy all pukani if I ever had to redo it though.