Clean-Up Crew

Not sure what you need? Tell us the tank size and what the algae is actually doing and our Clean Up Crew Calculator builds the crew from what is swimming in our systems today, with live prices. It will also tell you to buy nothing if that is the honest answer.

The usual mistake with a cleanup crew is buying it like a product instead of stocking it like livestock. A hundred snails in a new tank eat the available algae in two weeks and then starve, which is a slower and less obvious failure than an algae bloom.

Start light. Add as the tank grows food for them, not before.

What is here splits by what it eats. Grazers for film algae and coralline: reef urchins, pin cushion urchins, slate pencil urchins, turbo snails. Detritus and leftover food, from inside the rock: brittle stars and serpent stars. Hair algae and the corners nothing else reaches: emerald crabs and red-legged hermits. And the shrimp that earn their place socially rather than by cleaning, cleaner and Pederson.

Hermits need spare empty shells or they will take one that is occupied. Urchins graze coralline off the glass and the rock, which is what you asked them to do, and they will carry a frag around while doing it.

Shop our extensive collection of saltwater aquarium clean-up crew.
Reef care guides: Clean-Up Crew 101