Why are my snails and hermits dieing?

[runway1]

The rest of my tank seems fine. My fish and corals thrive well although, my frogspawn goes back and forth. Sometime looks great, other times not.

Anyhow, I'm losing red-legs and turbo snails like crazy. Thay just don't seem to live. What's up with that?

Ca: ~440
kh: ~8.2
NO3: ~10/15
Bad stuff all 0
Temp ~81°

 

[Hara]

well, actually nitrates are considered "bad stuff' to inverts. They are not as tolerant as fish. What about water changes? How often do you do them, how large are they and how close does the make up water match up to the existing tank water, in temperature, ph, salinity? What is the salinity level now?

 

[Brenden]

NO3 does not look good. It has my vote. As Hara asked what is your salinity?

 

[seaham358]

have you used any chemicals in the tank? Copper to treat the fish, is the lr all new or was it used from another reefer? how long are they in the tank before they die? How do you acclimate them..

 

[oyf709]

from wat u post out, i would go for nitrate, inverts are pretty NO3 sensitive, btw, NO3 can be deadly to shrimp if u got any

 

[DragonForce]

I recently added grape calupera to a mini fuge I made. My N03 was at 0 in 3 days. HTH

 

[ZoozFishMaster]

Although nitrate concentration between 10-15 ppm is not ideal, I would bet that this is not the reason the snails and hermits are dying. Nitrates at 10-15 ppm is definitely not horrible...both snails and especially hermit crabs are pretty hardy. The nitrates aren't killing them.

 

[oyf709]

Although nitrate concentration between 10-15 ppm is not ideal, I would bet that this is not the reason the snails and hermits are dying. Nitrates at 10-15 ppm is definitely not horrible...both snails and especially hermit crabs are pretty hardy. The nitrates aren't killing them.

i wouldn't be so sure about that, unless the hermits and snils have been in the tank with the same condition for a long time, otherwise i would say even the No3 didn't directly killed them,however, the poor water quality did raise the stress lvl of those inverts. My snils and hermit runs around in my tank fine even when my NO3 was around 100-300 (out of chat).But because the nitrate increase slowly and they pass thru that transition,they did stay alive. The change of water quality between lfs and his home tank might cause the death of those hermit and snils.

 

[ZoozFishMaster]

Oyf709, you could be right. However, I believe even if the LFS tanks tested 0 for nitrates, a bump up to 10 or 15 would not be enough to totally erradicate every snail or hermit introduced. I'm especially having a hard time believing it would kill the hermits..those little guys are pretty tolerant. Like you have said before, I have seen snails and hermits running around find in tanks that have tested well over 100 ppm nitrate. A simple bump up 10 ppm, IMO, would not be enough to kill every single one introduced.

 

[runway1]

Well, I certainly would not point to NO3. Heck, when my tank was brand new, just past cycling, the snails and crabs were the only thing that thrived well and the NO3's were 2x/3x that amount.

As for "poor water quality", I don't think so. I have corals that are loving life and they're far more sensitive to water quality than the snails. My pwc's are weekly, without missing. I change 10 gallons.

One thing has changed; I began using Ocean Pure salt mix. In the past, I bought mix at the lfs. They used Tropic Marin. Do you think the change in mix could be the culprit?

BTW, my sg stays between 1.024/1.026

 

[AMANIQU77]

Snails stink when they die. I just want to mention that because when I used to have snails months and months ago, it really stank up my house because I didn't know. I just picked it up and as soon as it got out of the water, bam. Lesson was suddenly learned.

 

[ezy33]

Bristle worms is my guess. The tip off is crab shell piles next to rocks where the worm lives.

 

[seaham358]

Can you answer any of these??

have you used any chemicals in the tank? Copper to treat the fish, is the lr all new or was it used from another reefer? how long are they in the tank before they die? How do you acclimate them..

 

[runway1]

seaham, no chems at all. My newest lr is at least two months old. They seem to last a few days to a couple of weeks, at most. I acclimate like any other life stock: Float, add a shot of water, add a shot, add a shot for about 45-60 minutes. Then, I net them out.

I found two hermits out of their shells, dead. My sally lightfoots are fine and the corals you see listed are awesome looking - as long as I can stop chipping my monti during water changes. Isn't my six-line supposed to hunt down bristle worms?