Best Cichlid cleanup crew?

[A201]

Red Tail Botia Loaches are the best scavengers I keep. They maneuver themselves into every nook and cranny in their search for food.
Voracious eaters, they grow fast & are relatively aggressive.
A group of five would probably do fine. You would need a little more hardscape & still would need a good sized weekly WC.

 

[Deadeye]

Snails are a good cleanup crew I have them in a few of my tanks. The only thing I would say about nerites is watch out for them laying eggs. The eggs don’t hatch in FW, and they remain stuck to whichever surface they were laid on. Only way to remove the eggs is to scrape them off which isn’t bad when it’s on the glass, but when they are all over nice driftwood it can be annoying.
Good luck!

Also nerites are more of algae eaters than carnivores.

Yep. After all of the suggestions I think I’ll do a dozen nerite snails. At least they won’t contribute much bio-load and won’t reproduce as badly as trumpet snails. I doubt my peacock will do much to keep them in check. He’s very lazy, always hidden… and pretty much worthless.

I may end up swapping him out for either a fire eel or bichir and put him in my 60 bow front planted tank.

Fire eel would get too big for the tank.

 

[duanes]

The best clean up crew, is the aquarist doing frequent, regular, water changes and vacuuming of the substrate.
Most fish like Siamese algae eaters don't eat algae at maturity, but do like to suck the slime coat off cichlids at night while the cichlids are resting, and injuring them.
I like all the cone Malay snails, but not for any noticeable cleaning ability, I like how they bumble thru, and help keep the substrate from going anoxic.

As you can see below, their algae eating skills are inept at best, beside I like algae, and find certain kinds a healthy component of a well kept tank.

One other thing, most cichlids are very efficient scavengers themselves, they constantly mouth substrate and looking for edibles, so in that way, they are their own clean up crew. What they won't consume themselves there are very few other fish that will also consume that stuff, and is only removed by vacuuming.