Why are my snails dying so fast??

[BrettE]

Hi all,

I've been fighting some green hair alagae, so 7 days ago I added 20 Mexican turbo snails from my LFS. Today I pulled 10 dead ones out.

Last week a cleaner shrimp died after being in the tank for a a few months.

About 2 or 3 weeks ago my fighting conch died. He'd been in the tank for a few months.

4 months ago I added a package of snails from Reef Cleaners, and they're pretty much all dead now. I think there's a few still kicking around, but most are gone.

I have 2 tuxedo urchins, and they seem ok.

It seems like I'm losing inverts pretty quickly. Any ideas what might be wrong?

Params:
Temp 77F (thermapen and Inkbird)
Salt 34.4 ppt (Tropic Marin hydrometer)
Mg 1445 ppm (Hanna)
Ca 382 ppm (Hanna)
NO3 9.7 ppm (Hanna)
PO4 0.35 ppm (Hanna)
Alk 8.4 ppm (Hanna)

I'd love to hear any thoughts or ideas.

Thanks!!
Brett

 

[Tahoe61]

I would start by looking for pest in the tank with a flash light in the middle of the night. Could be Polyclad Flatworms, assorted crabs, Pyramid Snails...

Do you have any fish types that could be responsible?

 

[Balthazar]

Ammonia levels?
Have you been dosing anything for the hair algae?

 

[BrettE]

I would start by looking for pest in the tank with a flash light in the middle of the night. Could be Polyclad Flatworms, assorted crabs, Pyramid Snails...

I will start that tonight. Does flashlight color matter? Should I prefer white, red, UV, or some other color of light?

Do you have any fish types that could be responsible?

I don't think so, but here's what's in there:
2 ocellaris clowns
1 firefish
1 royal gramma
1 midas blenny
1 fox face
5 bimac anthias
1 teeny tiny baby blue tang
1 small baby yellow tang

2 tuxedo urchins
2 skunk cleaner shrimp

Ammonia levels?

I measured with a Hanna checker and I got 0.02 ppm total ammonia. I believe that works out to 0.002 ppm free ammonia given my temp, salinity, and pH. This checker almost never reads zero, and the reading is +/- 0.05 ppm, so I'm inclined to believe that ammonia isn't my problem.

Have you been dosing anything for the hair algae?

I have not. I'm trying manual removal, clean up crew, and lowering phosphates. Two weeks ago phosphate level was 0.49 ppm, so it's going the right direction. I also plan to add a few more tangs to chomp away at it.

Thanks!!
Brett

 

[Tahoe61]

Flash light color shouldn't matter. You can also physically remove larger snail types and examine them for parasitic Pyramid Snails. Pyramids look like a grain of rice.
Polycald Flatworms typically hunt at night as do crabs.

 

[phillyb614]

Check for copper. If you have any metal in any equipment that is rusting (may not be visible without taking things apart) it could be leaching heavy metals into your water. This happened to me and it killed every invert I put in the tank.

 

[BrettE]

Flash light color shouldn't matter. You can also physically remove larger snail types and examine them for parasitic Pyramid Snails. Pyramids look like a grain of rice.
Polycald Flatworms typically hunt at night as do crabs.

Both of those sound pretty awful. I'm starting to understand why people QT all the things :worried-face:

Check for copper. If you have any metal in any equipment that is rusting (may not be visible without taking things apart) it could be leaching heavy metals into your water. This happened to me and it killed every invert I put in the tank.

I did an ICP test 2 months ago (ICP Results), and I did't see any. I just sent another sample in yesterday, so we'll see what that says about Cu or other metals.

Thanks!!
Brett

 

[BrettE]

I wanted to confirm that I actually had green hair algae and not bryopsis, so I look a sample and looked under the microscope. What I found was a lot of dinoflagellates.

I believe these look like ostreopsis dinoflagellates, which is perplexing because I have a UV. The UV is 57 watts and my total water volume is about 170 gallons. It's currently plumbed in the sump, so maybe it's not cycling enough new water through it?

 

[vetteguy53081]

I wanted to confirm that I actually had green hair algae and not bryopsis, so I look a sample and looked under the microscope. What I found was a lot of dinoflagellates.

I believe these look like ostreopsis dinoflagellates, which is perplexing because I have a UV. The UV is 57 watts and my total water volume is about 170 gallons. It's currently plumbed in the sump, so maybe it's not cycling enough new water through it?

I see green hair algae and possible Dino. Assure calcium is not low and acclimate any snails very slowly. Many will not consume GHA and assure there is film algae for them to graze on. Some fish that will go after snails are wrasses, blennies and hawkfish

 

[56longroof]

Did you use real live rock or base rock? I was loosing snails and when I took out the rock to add more sand I found about a dozen pistol shrimp and various crabs. I'm not loosing them as much now. Just the occasional one a hermit crab kills to take its shell.

 

[BrettE]

Did you use real live rock or base rock? I was loosing snails and when I took out the rock to add more sand I found about a dozen pistol shrimp and various crabs. I'm not loosing them as much now. Just the occasional one a hermit crab kills to take its shell.

I used Marco rock and caribsea sand.

 

[Awake2005]

sounds like uv is not working to me...

 

[krollins]

I had a similar problem starting off where a lot of the inverts I was adding were dying. It was because of a broken refractometer which caused salt to be too high.