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

[shwareefer]

If the urchins hang out at the top of the tank I'll lay some nori on them which they quickly flip up and start eating. My cowrie will steal some from them if he happens to be around.

 

[littlehermit0]

I have a small tank, no fish for now but alot of CUC, they eat soon much and I have to give food every single day twice, because they search for food so much, the other resources like algae or decaying things isn't really enough for the crabs or Nassarius, my snails eat mostly algae because I have a lot of it

 

[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 ......

However I will say - when I feed the fish - they all come out - including 100 snails

 

[knockout]

Negative, there is enough poop for all cc when I feed the fish

 

[EricR]

I hand-feed my skunk cleaner shrimp just to entertain guests.
I feed random stuff to my urchin and conch when they're at the front of the tank just for own personal amusement.
...but I don't think any of them actually need it,,, just more of like a treat

 

[lubeck]

I voted occasionally because 75% of my live rock is covered in coral now.

 

[Operation Philo Beddoe]



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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If I haven’t seen my shrimp molt/shed exoskeleton, I feed Crab Cuisine. It has whatever they need to grow.

 

[DiabloJP]

They’re my buddies too just like the fish, so I make sure they get the hookup. A fat and sassy CUC is a long-lived CUC.