Turbo snails falling on their backs!!

[A. Grandis]

No one has mentions dinos yet. If I remember correctly dino's are toxic to snails and a whole host of other things when eaten.

Grandis: are you sure your diatom outbreak wasn't a dino outbreak?

Hello rbp 4 135:

Very well!! Yes, how could we forget about that?

The reason I think that was diatoms is because diatoms are known to be a problem when excess silicates are present and that "filtered water" probably had lots of silicates from the resin used (?).

There was no way to do a microscopic examination at the time and therefore I couldn't identify that with a 100% accuracy.

Yes, I could be wrong! :fun5:
I know that dinos are bad and nasty guys and would kill even some herbivore fishes if ingested.

Thanks so much for the heads up and additions to the thread!

Grandis.

 

[A. Grandis]

Update here:

I've added 4 small Turbos in my 75gal. about 6 months ago.
Found the old large snail dead yesterday. He was in the tank for long time, but the interesting thing is: I didn't add Mg to the tank for 2 weeks, waiting to order and get a new bottle. I just can't believe that was the main reason, but that was the only thing I can think of. Could be the the snail was old too. I don't know how long they live.
No additions to the systems nor changes of any kind.
It could be because I dose so little Mg, once I don't have hard coral in my systems… So once I stopped it dropped too much with the coralline using it.

My 125gal has plenty snails and they're reproducing a lot. The system is stable now and I took many of the original larger snails back to the ocean, once algae was under control.

Once more: Mg makes a difference!
I'm also dosing strontium as well!
Temperature of the 2 systems is around 79°F.

Grandis.

 

[Fail_sh3d]

So you found the snail death to be related to the low MG? Did you test MG levels during the "low point"?

I was having the same problem with the turbos. My trochus are doing great, on the other hand....

 

[A. Grandis]

I didn't have time to check the Mg but I'm pretty sure that was it!
I mean, by all the experiences I've had in the past with the Turbos, and measuring the Mg levels, I can tell you that the difference of ~2 weeks without dosing, and with the amount of coralline algae I've got, would be enough to affect the Turbos. That particular Turbo was old.
I was so busy that I also didn't do water changes for 3 weeks! So, add that to the Mg replacement.
All together the Mg went down and that was it.
I don't think it went too low, but enough.
I wish I've measured it, to know exactly how much it went down, but I didn't.
All my other small Turbos are doing great and today I did a ~20% water change.
There was absolutely no other changes besides that and I'm really consistent on my additives, and have an ATO running.
I'm thinking of setting a dosing pump, specially for the Mg.

After this I can tell you guys: Mg is very important to keep the Turbos!

Just my US$.02.

Grandis.

 

[A. Grandis]

I've measured today.
Mg is @ 1360 now.

Grandis.

 

[A. Grandis]

Alright here is one more for this thread:

Mistake when dosing brought my chemistry crazy:
Ca: 500
Mg 1360
Alk 8.5
pH was 7.4 early morning!!!

The alkalinity was kinda low in my system for the past days and I decided to added about 5+ ml of the BRS buffer mix to the system manually at once close to the powerhead.
Found some of the small Turbo snails on their backs and some dead snails in the next morning. Some of the snails on the glass look like shrinking.

I think the extreme change on alk/pH did that. Shock!
I added also a small six line wrasse (dead now, probably by my huge goby!!).
I don't think the fish did it. Do you?

Just to let us know with a quick update to the thread...
Params are back to normal, but I think I did too fast!!
Only Ca is too high now, ~480. Alk is 9.0 and Mg 1360.
Next time I'll do changes much slower!!

Grandis.