Snails dying?

[easily_fishstracted]

hey, so having a sort of sudden die-off of algae-eating snails (astraeas i think) - i found a few empty shells in the bottom a few days ago and noticed two more last night. Where there were once 8, there are now only 3. Could it be the heat-wave? I noticed temps went up to just over 29C last night, and so i made some adjustments to lighting and equipment...

otherwise no seeming problems with other tank denizens: hammer coral, green polyps, bubble tip anemone, 2 clowns, yasha goby, pistol shrimp and a few hermits...

 

[kashman100]

Do you have pictures of the snails? Are you sure it was sudden? If they are astraeas they can't flip themselves over. So anytime they flip you have to right them. Hermit crabs will kill them for there shells too. Get some trochus snails they are the best and you dont have to worry about them flipping over

 

[easily_fishstracted]

thanks for the reply - i can get some shots for you but I didn't realize they couldn't flip themselves over and this makes lots of sense now, because I knock them off the glass all the time when scraping, and never thought to right them on the sand. (facepalm)

 

[kashman100]

No problem. At least it wasn't something major. Get some trochus snails (Black foot if you can find them) and you wont have to worry about it