Problems with Snails!

D&KSac

Premium Member
Hi im new to the hobby and like most of use im sure im making some kind of mistake. lol Well i have a 37 gal reef going its been up for about a month, but about a week ago i put some snails in because the brown algae was getting out of control and it looked horrible. Within a few days all 5 of them were toast. I tested my water and couldnt find anything wrong. So i then took some water down to my local fish store to have them take a look at my water, again nothing was found to be wrong. So i bought 5 more snails yesterday and put them into the tank. I woke up this morning to 3 dead snails out of 5 i purchased. Still cant figure out whats wrong with my water. So here are a few specifics about my tank. I have an undertank acrylic sump/filtration, powerskimmer, HO Compact lighting, and a powerhead. My salinity is 1.024. All the other tests were within range short of a small amount of amonia from the first snails dying. HELP i can't figure this out.

Thanks
Dave in Sac
 
Did you acclimate the snails before putting them in your tank?

I usually acclimte snails for at least an hour before they go in the tank.
 
yes i did for about 25-30 mins. when they hit the bottom they went right to work eating on the slime.
 
Snails are sensitive to salinity changes in particular because the pressure of the salinity equalizing inside their shells is enough to kill them. I take about 3 hours to drip acclimate them. I have yet to lose a snail...ever.
 
I guess i could be that. So i should just open the bag a bit and let it float around my tank so the water can mix with the store water? I was told that could be dangerous becuase you dont know whats in there water? Sorry im new to this... lol
 
No no...what I do is open the bag, rinse the bag off under tap water, dump the water down the drain until there is just a bit more than enough water to cover the snails, set it to float in the tank. I then use a turkey baster to squirt water from the tank into the bag, a few ounces at a time in 10-15 minute intervals. When the bag has like 3-4" of water in it I dump it down the drain so there is just a bit more than enough water to cover the snails again, and repeat the process for about 3 hours. After that, I grab each snail and put it into the tank instead of dumping the bag of water into the tank. I never dump the bag water into the tank.
 
Ok i can try that when i go get some more. Heres a question thats is related to this issue. Are brass fittings bad i had one on my return pump till today. A friend told me it might be releasing heavy metals into the water. Ive since repiped it with pvc just in case so hopefully after the major water change i did today hope it deluted whatever is killing them if its anything.
 
I have never dripped acclimated snails and i have about 20 going strong. There all large turbo snails; if that matters.

I did have a few die weeks later because my hermit crabs stole there shells.
 
my temp has been stable at 79 degrees. all my tests were good. only thing im not sure about is that brass fitting. we did test for copper. thats kinda funny about the hermit crabs i just put 5 in my tank.
 
ok i did a 50% change today using RO water and hard piped the return using pvc. I was hoping that would be the problem since it was easy to eliminate
 
I agree the brass is probably the culprit in this case. Invertebrates are very sensitive to copper. The acclimation issue doesn't seem the most likely cause. It may kill one or two snails if you don't acclimate correctly or even shorten their lives, but all of them dying in short order. . .can't imagine that would be the cause.

I don't know much about getting copper out of a system, so hopefully a few water changes will be enough. I've heard it works its way into the silicon seals and other things and continues to slowly leech through time. I have no idea if that's true or just an old reefkeeper's tale.
 
i hope not i tested for the presence of copper and it was neg. So hopefully it was just trace amounts enough to kill the snails. but my 2 shrimps and hermit crabs seem unaffected
 
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