[sean]

Hello again all,
Does it do more harm than good to vacuum the sand bed during water changes? Should I be vacuuming the sand bed at all?
Can I have too many cleaner critters? I am beginning to think so from what I have seen/read on others reefs.
I have about 200 nassarius snails, maybe 40 or so blue legs of various sizes, 30 or so turbo snails, but...I just ordered 3 serpent stars, 12 scarlet leg hermits (for diatom control?), two emerald crabs, three peppermint shrimp, two queen conch, and two sallylight foot crabs.
Should I thin out the nassarius snails? Again, I have a 180 soft coral reef, 14 fish, that has been running for almost 7 months.
I do currently have a mild/moderate diatom problem on the sand only, but no other algae or nitrate problems that I can tell.
Thanks,
Sean
PS. If you need cleaners, you can't beat the deal that www.drsfostersmith.com has right now. If you buy $60 worth of their large variety of cleaner critters, they will ship them for free! I ordered all of the above for only $62.00!

 

[Brooke]

Sounds like a good batch of critters to me. That's a big tank with a big bioload. You may even need more snails in the future. The conchs should clean up the diatoms from the sandbed pretty well. Be sure you keep up with water changes and testing our nitrates in a young tank!

Brooke