Snails alive?

[Lexii denton]

I’ve been through hell and back with my nano reef! I’ve got all my parameters right now I’ve got them to stay right!
Nitrate 0
Nitrite 0
Ammonia 0
Phosphate 0
Calcium 400
Ph 8.3
Salinity 1.025
Temp is 73° but I try to keep it closer to 75/76

So I’m trying to get some live stock In here again! I put 3 snails and 3 hermit crabs in lastnight. They all roamed for about 3 hours and then just kinda hung out. My snails all seem to be kind of just hanging out. They’re alive, when I pick them up they close their foot, are they dying?

I’ve been trying to get this tank right for months! Please give me some hope! My hermit crabs seem to be doing better than the snails

 

[TheEngineer]

How did you acclimate them? Snails do tend to hang out for some time after introduction in my experience.

 

[Lexii denton]

How did you acclimate them? Snails do tend to hang out for some time after introduction in my experience.

I do a drip acclimation, theirs took about 30/40 min of floating In the bag in my tank while adding pipets of my water to their bag until the salinity was equal

 

[TheEngineer]

They’re probably fine. Just leave them be for a few days.

 

[Lexii denton]

Update!! I came home from work and all but one snail is dead [emoji24] I’ve worked so hard on this tank for almost 3 months now and I can’t get anything to live. Any ideas what it could be??

 

[TheEngineer]

What are your water parameters?

 

[Lexii denton]

What are your water parameters?

I put all parameters in original post

 

[TheEngineer]

73 is quite cold. Why so low?

 

[Lexii denton]

After some other opinions I turned it up to 78° I usually tried to keep it Around 75 but I was told that was too cold

 

[Mikedawg]

Don't give up; looks like you're on right track and raising temp as you have is a good thing. I think closing of the foot is a defensive/survival instinct and normal.
How did you get your parameters to read 0 and What are your inverts eating?

 

[Lexii denton]

I use 2 different filter types and I’ve used ammolock to kill ammonia and

for nitrate and nitrite, I think one of my biofilters killed the phosphates

 

[TheEngineer]

You used these chemicals during your cycle?

 

[Lexii denton]

Not during my initial cycle, I had put snails in, then after a week of initially putting snails in I put in a few zoa frags and everything spiked again like it was cycling again. That’s when I started using the chemicals

 

[TheEngineer]

Ok. It sounds to me like your tank just isn’t ready. How did you cycle the tank? Live rock? Live sand? How long did it cycle?

 

[Lexii denton]

Both live rock and live sand, it took about 5 weeks to cycle, it’s about a month into this “second cycle”

 

[Mikedawg]

Yeah, if you're having to use Amquel it may well be that your tank didn't finish cycling the first time and is recycling. If you don't add Amquel, what ammonia readings will you get? That might tell you if you need to run second cycle a little longer.

 

[Lexii denton]

I’ll have to give it a few weeks without the Amquel. So pretty much my best bet now is to be patient and let this cycle finish?

 

[TheEngineer]

I’ll have to give it a few weeks without the Amquel. So pretty much my best bet now is to be patient and let this cycle finish?

That’s what I would do. Do a 25% water change and then let it run for a few weeks. Do a ghost feeding and test 24 hours later. No spike? Feed a little more and repeat. Still no spike? Start with a clean up crew.

 

[Lexii denton]

Thank you so so so much!! I’ve felt so lost through all of this

 

[Mikedawg]

I think that would be a good plan, especially if you periodically test ammonia to see which direction it is going. You may be sick of reading about cycling, but here's an article that is straight forward and may be of interest: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/cycling-an-aquarium.306554/
Once your tank is stabilized, the really fun part of reefing will begin - selecting fish, coral, inverts, etc so be sure to post pics!