question about snails

[cmiani2002]

Just wondering.....how long usually snails live in a tank??

i seem to have quite a turnover...and i only had a the tank for a few months and i must already lost some 10 snails.

Crabs are not in luck either in my tank, lost 2 sally lightfoot, one after the other.

Water parameter seems normal, and other critter are doing fine.

Is it possible is the hermit crab killing them?

 

[venwu225]

define "normal", because snails are generally long lived

 

[cmiani2002]

OK, normal to me is;

temp 79 F
Ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate 20
ph 8.2
calcium 400

CF lights

....what else?

 

[graveyardworm]

Could be any number of things, a hidden predator which hitchhiked on the LR, fluctuating water parameters, certainly hermits, and/or the sally's could be killing the snails/eachother. In the wild snails are generally long lived, years/decades. 20 nitrate is kinda high, probably not enough to cause snail mortality but should be addressed.

How many crabs, sallylightfoot, hermits, or others.
What kind of snails, how many?
How do you acclimate the snails, and other critters?
What is your SG, and how do you measure it?
Do you use filtered ( RO/DI ) water for top off?

 

[cmiani2002]

Well, the snails seems to have started dieng after the sallylightfoot where gone....
and actually cought one of the hermit crab picking at one of the snail, cannot say fro sure if the snail was dead already or not.
However, i found out that the salinity was pretty high, 1.028, so i have been removing water and added distilled water to bring it down.
It is now at 1.025 and i will slowly bring it down some more, I want it to be at about 1.023.
Trying to go slow with changes as not to kill everything else in there.
I acclimate the livestock by letting the bag float for about an hour in the tank and slowly adding tank water to the bag, after an hour or so i put the livestok in the tank, and throw away the water in the bag.
I have 6 hermits, 12-15 different kind of snails (turbo, nassau, marguerite), just yesterday I replaced the sally lightfoot, need one in there to control algae, furthermore there are 1 clownfish, 1damsel and 1 6line wrasse.
I use distilled water for top offs.
I measure salinity with Instant Ocean hydrometer.

 

[graveyardworm]

I would leave it right at 1.025, that's about perfect.

The sally's mostly only graze on algae when they are young, as they grow they will become more aggressive and eventually may eat your fish, or anything else they can get their claws on for that matter.

Did you test the water they came in from the LFS? Its possible that the LFS has their water at a lower than normal SG, and an hour just isnt a long enough acclimation to get safely to 1.028.

 

[muzik316]

Out of stupidty I ask this... if a snail is on its back ah.. shell can it right itself? I have one in my tank that is alive but is on his shell on the bottom. He pops out every now and then and goes back in.

 

[jmicky41]

Most snails can right themselves, but asteas can't.

Snails need a long acclimation. Several hours of a slow drip acclimation is optimal. I used to have poor luck with snails untill I found out the fish store was "just throwing them in". Once they started to drip acclimate, my success improved greatly. Turns out I was buying snails that the LFS had previously injured.