Clean up Crew

[mamie]

How many and what kind of clean up crew do I need?
I have a 30 gallon tank with Amiarcle filter/protein(good for up to 55 gal.) skimmer,crushed coral bed, 2 perc. clowns,3 damsels and a lawnmower blenny(is really cool to watch by the way).
My tank is up and running for a little over 2 months now. Everything is ok except ph is a little high 8.4-8.6, salt a little high 0.025-0.026 and amonia is 0.25. I did a little water change a week ago 5 gallons.
ANy help is appreciated!
Thanks,
mamie

 

[michaeltx]

welcome to the board!!
couple things.
1 your ammonia is elevated so this means one of 2 things
1-- the intial cycle isnt completed yet
2-- that youe feedings to much and the excess is decaying in the tank cause the ammonia to go up.
---what are you feeding and how much??
ammonia at any level is deadly to fish and inverts some can live through it butbe severly stressed by it. water changes will help bring this down and over time the bacteria load will get to a level to keep it down.
---how are you doing the water changes?
as far as a cleanup crew they reall should have been the first added to the tank. but a varitey of snails. scarlet reef hermits
the best thing for the PH is to continue doing a water change every couple of days to get everything back in line. a high or low PH can cause several problems with the tank including stress the fish that can kill. I would get everything inline before adding a cleanup crew.
ask any and all question that you might have and do a lot of reading and research it will help in the long run to be succesful in the SW world.
Mike

 

[mamie]

Thanks for the help Mike.
I feed them pelts every other day,although I just started feeding them evry other day last week.
I have only changed the water once and it was 5gallons. I made the saltwater and let it sit over night. I used a gravel cleaner to clean the crushed coral and take out the dirty water. My ph has been the same since I set the tank up. I don't know why it is high.Maybe I should get a ph stablizer of some sort.
I was actually thinking of taking out the crushed coral and putting in sand to help with the decayed food problem.
Linda

 

[aarone]

I would first of all change out that Crushed coral bed, and go with a DSB (deep sand bed) this will help with nitrifying bacteria, and keep nitrates down. As for the clean up crew, i have a thirty gallon with 4 extra large mexian turbo snails, and 11 astrea snails. Then i have one large hermit

(hes my favorite)
And 3 smaller ones.

 

[gesswhosbak]

aarone does that large hermit ever threaten your smaller ones? I got a large one from the beach in fla. It has killed two of my scarlets which are very much smaller than he is. Just wondering if I should take hime out of not, also do you think they will harm a reef tank?