my snails are dying

[ejiujiu]

I have a 55 gallon Seahorse/Goby tank. All of my Turbo Snails are belly-up (dead or near it). My seahorses and goby are fine. Nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, pH, are all acceptable. Phosphates are very low. I attached a homemade Co2 system to help the plants (soda bottle and tubing) and I use baking soda to raise the pH. Have I killed my snails? I hope to solve this before I loose more sealife. Thanks for any input. eric

[Hara]

What is acceptable numbers? what is the ph? what is the temp? How fast did you raise the ph?

Originally Posted by ejiujiu

I attached a homemade Co2 system to help the plants (soda bottle and tubing) and I use baking soda to raise the pH.

Most likely you have had some serious swings in the PH due to your recent changes. CO2 lowers PH and the baking soda will actually spike the PH up to or over 10 before it settles. CO2 can be an effective method to stimulate macro algae growth in SW aquaria but it must be balanced with the additions of your PH control, not up and down wildy. What is the bubble rate from the CO2?

Have you also been monitoring the PH and alkalinity when doing these changes?

Snails as with most sensitive inverts are very adversely affected by these types of uncontrolled changes.

Cheers
Steve

[Hara]

Seahorses are also very sensitive to the changes. I have never used co2 in any of my tanks, does it produce an abundance of oxygen? Seahorses are prone to GBD which has been linked to highly oxygenated water. Just thought I would mention that.