Ready For Cuc

[stef_uk]

Well my 55g tank appears to have finished cycling with all my readings being stable over the last few days.I did a 25% water change today with pre mixed water from my LFS.
Was asked if i had thought about CUC,and was told that i could have "quite a few" for a tank my size.Was shown Turbo Snails,Cleaner Shrimp and Hermits in different colours..plain red,black with white tips and blue.
Does anyone have an idea just how many CUC i could have in a tank my size and what mix? I wouldnt want to end up with shrimp,hermits and snails having a mass brawl and killing each other.
Nothing was labelled with anymore than "Cleaner Shrimp" "Turbo Snails" and "Red,White tipped and Blue" for the hermits,so i dont know specific types.

Any suggstions would be great.

 

[dilbert]

Depends somehow on the conditions in the tank.

Algae:
Depends much on how much and what type of algae you expect.
The snails won't clean all your glass. So, they are imperfect cleaners. But they go on the live rock, too. Maybe they eat there something before it spreads around.

Detritus:
If you don't want to vacuum it yourself then there might be already bristleworms and pods in the live rock.
Sometimes those get eaten by the fish depending on the species. I suspect that my cleaner shrimps have eaten much of the pods, too. Or the fish. At least, I don't see any pods no more.
Nassarius snails eat detritus, too, but are omnivore. Some people reported them attacking herbivore snails.

My cleaner shrimps don't do a great cleaning job as there is much left over fish food. So, it depends also on the feeding scheme.

There are also different reports from people about how harmless and peaceful all those omnivore cleaner are.
At least, too small territories, too few shells for hermits, or too few food seems to trigger unfriendly behaviour.

I have only one snail and two cleaner shrimps and I must say they are merely there for comedy. I like to watch them so I'm not unhappy with them apart from the cleaner shrimps eating small critters instead of cleaning something, at least occasionally.