Crab and snail probs.

[bammbamm74]

Ok, here's the deal. I had my 10 gallon set up in my daughter's room with a coral banded, 3 blue chormis and on psuedochromis. I got a really bad algae outbreak (Bad lighting) that I couldn't get rid of. My psuedo killed everything in the tank. I was having a problem keeping crabs and snails alive. Phosphates would be zero, nitrates at about 15ppm, no ammonia, no nitrites, no copper, I kept my temp at about 79, but sometimes my wife wouldn't open the room and turn the fan on and it would get to 81. SG is about 1.022.
I drained it and refilled it, put a new piece of live rock in it and cycled the tank for about a month. I've dried out the old rock and boiled it to kill the algae and put some pieces in there to use as a base rock. My levels are fine, well, phosphates were at about .2 on the Salifert test, but I put phos-guard and did a water change and now there are at about .03. My snails and crabs are dying still. Red legs and astrias. I don't get it. Any ideas? Nitrates 15ppm, very little elevated ammonia, no nitrites, sg is 1.022 temp is 79 and stable. alk is good

 

[ed r]

I don't know that it should cause you to lose them, but I think most crabs and snails would do a lot better with a SG of 1.025 rather than 1.022. In fact I wouldn't even keep fish at that level for very long. You don't mention what your pH is. You would like it to be around 8.3 and stable. If it is too low, that would be hard on both crabs and snails.

 

[bammbamm74]

I haven't ever kept high sg levels and my show tank is doing awesome. Corals and fish both. I don't really test the ph that much since I just test the alk. Kent's SuperDKh buffer is just the old ph buffer with a new label. It buffs the alk which is directly related to the ph. But when I check it I see that the ph is about 8.2. I will try to bring the sg up tonight, see what that does. But I've been told that higher sg levels promote more algae growth. What do you think?