Snails die within hours.

FishForums.net Pet of the Month
🐶 POTM Poll is Open! 🦎 Click here to Vote! 🐰

jcms083069

New Member
Joined
Sep 6, 2021
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
Location
Florida
Does anyone have any experience with adding perfectly healthy Mexican turbo snails to a reef and having the snails immediately withdraw and then never move and die within 24 hours. This just happened to me. I pulled 12 snails from a bio-cube that have been thriving in there for about 3 weeks. They ate voraciously and were very strong. Alk 8.4 Calc 360 Mag 800 (very low). Salinity 1.023 Phos .17 NO3 undetectable. But hair algae everywhere. I do not believe this is dinos. It looks more like hair algae... no sliminess and not bubbles in the algae.
 
I don't know marine tanks at all I'm afraid, @Chad is the saltwater guru :)

Any chance that the water or tank has ever been treated with a medication that contains copper though? Snails don't move and die within a day or two if exposed to copper, which a lot of meds contain. I had the same issue with nerites and a second hand tank. Needed to use Cuprisorb to clear the copper out.

I've heard that even if the copper was in the tank a long time ago, that the copper remains attached to the silicone etc. So say you bought a second hand, empty tank, and the previous owner had used a copper containing med, the snails/shrimp you add even after cleaning can die from copper poisoning.
 
Does anyone have any experience with adding perfectly healthy Mexican turbo snails to a reef and having the snails immediately withdraw and then never move and die within 24 hours. This just happened to me. I pulled 12 snails from a bio-cube that have been thriving in there for about 3 weeks. They ate voraciously and were very strong. Alk 8.4 Calc 360 Mag 800 (very low). Salinity 1.023 Phos .17 NO3 undetectable. But hair algae everywhere. I do not believe this is dinos. It looks more like hair algae... no sliminess and not bubbles in the algae.
Did you move the snails from the bio-cube to another tank?If so, what are the parameters of the cube?

Turbo snails are usually very hardy, so this is interesting.

(Also, how did you remove the snails from the tank?)
 
Really sounds like some sort of acclimation shock if they reacted immediately rather than getting lethargic over a longer time like hours. Changes in some water params too fast (not just salinity) can cause internal damage in snails, and it can easily kill them. This can even happen with fw snails if the ph is changed too much in an instant.

Also, just to ask...are you sure they were dead (sniff test)? Shocked snails that survive can take as long as a couple days to start moving again.
 
When was the last time you replaced the salt water in your tank? if you don't change it out periodically the chemistry of the water will change and if the hemisry doesn't match natural salt water it could kill some animals. Th hair algae might be a symptom of a chemistry issue.

The
 

Most reactions

trending

Members online

Back
Top