Tank cleaners?

can anyone recommend any tank cleaners (eg snails or something) to put in my tank to keep it clean that wont hurt my axies and wont get eaten by my axies.

Just remember that any animal you add will not “clean” your tank. All animals will produce toxic waste products and make it harder for you to maintain water quality. I would always opt for removing algae by hand over adding algae eaters. The algae may even be growing because there is an excess of nutrients in the water – adding more animals will only make it worse.

Have a read of: http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/Algae/algae-randall.html
And: http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/Tank_critters.shtml

Freshwater shrimps can do a little bit. They do not stress bioload much and too fast for an axolotl to eat.They won't make your tank into sparkleing clean waters and glass devoid of life, but they can help. Other types of shrimp are better at eating axolotl leftover food than eating algae. If you chose a shrimp, do your homework first, especially if you want your shrimp to reproduce themselves.

Oh, there are also plants that are good algae busters. One is Hornwort(Ceratophyllum demersum). It grows very very fast competing with algae. Eventually it can take over and prevent any noticable algae from appearing. It can make a nice background wall if one puts rocks to hold a few stems down. Hornwort needs lots of light to grow even faster.One does not neceasarilly need to get critters to make algae go away.

(Message edited by mantighoul on February 05, 2007)

The only aquarium cleaners I would recommend are the non-live kind:
http://www.petdiscounters.com/Algae-Cleaning-Pads-Handheld-c162.html
Most animals that you might consider are either potentially harmful to the axies, or don't really do a good job with cleaning (or both). Any animal you add that consumes waste will also PRODUCE its own waste. No matter how good of a scavenger it is, there is little net gain to the aquarium-ecosystem as a whole. The health of the aquarium still comes down to (1) manual removal, and (2) frequent partial water changes.