Snails dying

Y

Youngeshark70

Member
Hey yall. I have tried twice to keep start off my 75 gal reef with some snails and cannot keep any alive. The tank has a 20 gal sump, around 90lbs of liverock, and a 2-3in deep sandbed. It had been set up for over a year and had fish, sadly the all died in a big tank crash. Anyways about 6 months later i finally got some money and time to rebuild it. I was pretty low equipped at the time and basically just cleaned up the tank and put new ro/di salt mix in and gave it a few weeks. Then tried about 10 snails and a emerald crab. All died within around 3 days. So i took a step back invested in a protein skimmer, red sea test kit, and a refractometer. My next go i used some raw shrimp to start the cycle and watched my parameters till all the ammonia went into nitrites then nitrates. Took about 2 weeks, and i then got 10 more snails and a peppermint shrimp to try. And today (4 days after putting them in) i pulled out the snails because they were dead. Though the peppermint shrimp is still alive.

Tank is
Sal- 1.024
Ammonia-0
Nitrite-0
Nitrates-20(alittle higher than i wanted but i did a 20 gal water change before adding snails)
Alkalinity-6
PH- 8.0 but stable
Temp- 84 (been trying to bring this down)

Hope i got all the needed info, if not just ask. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? The snails came from petco because i didn't want to spend money on shipping for just a few snails. But even being from there i would think that dying so soon would have to be a problem on my end. I floated them for about half a hour then drip acclimated for over a hour.


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Thanks for that, i will try that next time. My next order will be from liveaquria, i read they keep their salinity at 1.018-19. So i will try n get a little quarantine tank ready at that and slowly bring it up to 1.024 that my display tank is at.


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Youngeshark70 said:
Thanks for that, i will try that next time. My next order will be from liveaquria, i read they keep their salinity at 1.018-19. So i will try n get a little quarantine tank ready at that and slowly bring it up to 1.024 that my display tank is at.


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Click to expand...

give reef cleaners a look before ordering. I have used them many times and have always been happy.
 
Where did you get your snails from?

I have had large causalities from Reef Cleaners (2 different orders). Most snails I got from LFS and LA survived and lived for long time.
 
have you used any copper in the tank before? When you cleaned the tank, how did you clean it. might want to think about running some carbon for a little while and see before sticking another batch in there.
 
Youngeshark70 said:
Sal- 1.024
Ammonia-0
Nitrite-0
Nitrates-20(alittle higher than i wanted but i did a 20 gal water change before adding snails)
Alkalinity-6
PH- 8.0 but stable
Temp- 84 (been trying to bring this down)
Click to expand...


I could easily be wrong but your Alk looks a bit low. Do you know if it has always been this low?
 
Don't worry too much about acclimating snails. When I added in my Nerites and Nassarius snails I temperature acclimated them then tossed them in.
 
scooter31707 said:
have you used any copper in the tank before? When you cleaned the tank, how did you clean it. might want to think about running some carbon for a little while and see before sticking another batch in there.
Click to expand...



I haven't ever used copper before and i only used tap water and good scrubbing when cleaning the tank.


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So the first time, sounds like your tank wasn't really cycled and so the next time around it was (good job on improving that). I would start with a few snails and see how it goes. Be sure your tank isn't showing any ammonia. It could be that they weren't in great shape from petco to begin with. I have gotten a few things there in the past and their tanks were anywhere from 1.018 to 1.030 (<-- for real! I tested the water). So the livestock may have been stressed from going from shipping bags into radically different parameters there, then the acclimation to your tank was just too much for them.

All just speculation though..good luck with the next group. I think getting them from a better source will help.
 
Reefcleaners ships their pre-chosen packages free. They are big packages though, I order a bit less than half the size of my tank. Just float the bag 15 min and add.

Also, make sure they are dead. Some snails can go dormant for 3-4 days after shipping, and seem dead. If they are really dead you'll know because they reeeeek. On my first order I threw away like 10 snails and then they "woke up" and started climbing out of the trash so I had to pick through the garbage to rescue them :)
 
My shrimp that i thought was alive just died. My tank still shows 0 for ammonia, 0 for nitrites, but nitrates have came down to 15. Temp is down to 81. I just put a clownfish in from qt yesterday and he looks healthy as can be. Is there something wrong with the tank or was it just a acclimation error? I did a 20% water change few days ago. I am stuck though, rather to wait and add more fish or try again with a cuc.


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Snails dying

Youngeshark70 said:
I haven't ever used copper before and i only used tap water and good scrubbing when cleaning the tank.


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You might have copper in your tap water, especially if you have copper plumbing in your house/ apartment. Do you treat your tap water for using it?

There are other potential problems using tapwater in a reef tank, of course. I assume you aren't using RO DI water for a reason.

Edit: oops, just read this again and realized that you were talking about cleaning not filling.

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