Clean up crew question

[Shishimon]

I have had my 29 gallon bio cube up for 36 days. As of yesterday my ammonia is 0 Nitrite is 0 Nitrate is 20 ppm PH is 8.2 water temp is 78-80. Would it now be safe to add a few clean up snails. I'm getting a small amount of green hair algae and still have small diatom out breaks. Next question I know never by fish from Petco or Petsmart but what about snails, crabs etc?

 

[Bifferwine]

Try to get those nitrates lower by doing a water change before you add inverts. 20 is pretty much the limit for them. You want them to be lower than that to keep a clean up crew.

Why never buy fish from Petco or Petsmart (besides the fact that Petsmart typically doesn't sell saltwater fish)? When I took down my tank a month ago, I had half a dozen fish that had been with me for 12 years. And another half dozen that had been with me for 8 years or so. Half of them were Petco fish. Every store is different. There are some good Petcos and some bad Petcos. The one that I got my fish from was a good Petco, and you could tell based on the knowledge of the employees, the conditions of their tanks and the health of their livestock. You can go to a Petco on the opposite side of town and have a completely different experience. It's up to you to be able to judge the quality of a store, and there are a lot of crappy LFSs out there too that I wouldn't buy fish from.

I think it's perfectly fine to buy livestock from stores (chain or locally owned) as long as they do a good job keeping their livestock healthy and in a good condition.

 

[little_fish]

Buying from Petco/Petsmart depends on each individual store, some have very good aquatics managers and its safe buy anything from them, some have bad aquatics mangers and nothing should be bought from them, so you will need to make an evaluation of the store in your area and go from there. Personally, i just dont like supporting their saltwater business so I dont buy at all, plus I have heard that their CUC are really over priced.

Also with nitrates at 20 ppm, i would purchase your first fish instead wait a few weeks to get the CUC. Inverts are sensitive to nitrates, and its toxic for them to live in water with them.

 

[Shishimon]

Ok thank you guys well I'll wait. So ready to get these nitrates down so I can start adding livestock. Little_fish so fish are less sensitive. Any recommendations on a first fish?

 

[Shishimon]

Think I may set a refugium this week and see if that helps lower nitrates.

 

[Shishimon]

Also think I'm going to buy some chemi pure ellite

 

[little_fish]

Fish can handle nitrates up to 100 ppm, but I still dont think its good for them to be that high.

Clowns are a great starter fish, full of personality and color, but there are lots of good choices out there :D