Taking care of the underwater workers: Do you directly feed your clean-up crew?

[Peace River]

Taking care of the underwater workers: Do you directly feed your clean-up crew?

Cleanup crew – you get them, acclimate them, let them loose in the tank, and they do their thing. Occasionally we may stop and look at a weird thing that they are doing and wonder how much longer it will take them to take care of the algae, but for the most part they are not an area of focus, and they just do their thing without notice or fanfare. The cleanup crew is replenished occasionally, and that is largely the extent of their care after the initial acclimation. Many consider the algae, detritus, and other stuff that has collected on the bottom of the tank enough. Do you directly feed your cleanup crew? Let us know your thoughts about directly feeding the cleanup crew in the related discussion.

Photo by @boacvh


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[Timfish]

Yup. After seeing some of these guys starved in tanks I don't think this one would have reached it's current age of 26+ if not fed.

 

[kevgib67]

Yes, occasionally when there is visually little algae present. Nori rubber banded to a rock for my urchin and algae wafers for the rest. Unfortunately, no need to supplement currently.

 

[reefchi]

Yes, occasionally when there is visually little algae present. Nori rubber banded to a rock for my urchin and algae wafers for the rest. Unfortunately, no need to supplement currently.

Do you do a full sheet of Nori or half? Does it pollute the tank or does the urchin eventually find it and eat it all?

 

[sfin52]

When creeps comes out looking for food I will give him a full cube. My chocolate chip star when at the water surface I will targer feed him as well.

 

[JAS927]

I’ve started directly feeding my arrow crab so it’ll stop killing everything in my tank. Does that count?

 

[kevgib67]

Do you do a full sheet of Nori or half? Does it pollute the tank or does the urchin eventually find it and eat it all?

I just use about a 4x4 inch, no pollution.

 

[anemonalex]

Never my crabs and snails. I put a serpent star in my sump that I claim on the clean up crew. I feed them a piece of wild caught fish or shrimp from kroger whenever it looks like it's unhappy

 

[anemonalex]

Yup. After seeing some of these guys starved in tanks I don't think this one would have reached it's current age of 26+ if not fed.

26 years or inches? Both would be nice for my serpent star! Thing is very cool

 

[moretor1]

Imo direct feeding is the best way to discourage them from eating things you don't want them to (corals or eachother)

I'll hold my frozen cubes out to the shrimp and let them grab some chunks off of it

 

[Katrina71]

I’ve started directly feeding my arrow crab so it’ll stop killing everything in my tank. Does that count?

@cdemoss01 This!

 

[randomfishdude]

I make my best attempt to feed my lynica star and I also feed my giant hermit crab.
I feed amost everything in the tank. I even feed my sps.

 

[Jeremy_d]

I take extra care to ensure my inverts are fed. My blue legs get a hikari algae wafer every 8-10 days, my conch gets a 1x1 sheet of nori (splits it with the emerald crab who is a jerk) and my nassarius snails get leftover frozen food. My skunk cleaner wants regularly as it steals food from the corals when I feed. Inverts are cheap but so am I, i want them to be as happy as possible and live as long as possible. The photo is from like 8 months ago, but I take muster of my hermits when I drop the wafer in. Here they are at the buffet

 

[ca1ore]

Doesn't actively feeding them rather defeat the purpose of them as clean-up ?

 

[Shaina Carey]

I have a margarita snail and he just eats my diatoms. When that is gone, I plan on feeding it some algae wafers

 

[Cthulukelele]

Doesn't actively feeding them rather defeat the purpose of them as clean-up ?

Then they're your shelled homies instead of your cleanup crew

 

[anthonymckay]

Doesn't actively feeding them rather defeat the purpose of them as clean-up ?

It's not uncommon that a cleanup crew is too good at its job and then dies of starvation

 

[MnFish1]

It depends on what the Cleanup crew is - I like watching crabs etc - catching things - I don't particularly care about snails eating algae. Second - many of these can survive longer periods with no food - so I don't worry about that. So - I say - no I don't feed my CUC - since my tank bioload with the food I add daily should feed entirely my CUC. Thats the definition of a CUC - they remove excess ......

 

[Alexraptor]

Since I broadcast feed, never. And I always have more than enough algae in the tanks for the herbivores.

 

[nano reef]

I currently dont but have on occasion feed a emerald crab and a coral banded shrimp but I guess the shrimp doesn't count as a cuc member!