HELP - Things are dieing and dissapearing!

[tgolbus]

Someting is going wrong.....
Temp 78
Salinity 1.022
Amonia 0
Nitrates 30
Nitrites 0
Here is the story....All leves used to be good. Then my skimmer died. It took me 1 week to get it replaced (ordered on line). Prizim hang on.
I noticed a snail shell empty...I pulled the shell out and there was no snail in it, or anywhere to be found.
2 Days later I found one of the crabs on top of a rock face up dead....
That is when I notices that the trates were elevated (normally 0).
2 Days laterI found another empty snail shell with no sign of the snail.
This morning I found a 3rd enpty snail shell.
I did a 15% water change yesterday.
I skipped a day of feeding (yesterday). The skimmer has been back on for about a day.
Any ideas? When you take a skimmer off will there be a mini cycle? Any idea how/where the snails could go, or who would eat them?
The fish are acting normal, eating well, and look fine.
What could be eating the snails????? (and 3 in a week?).

 

[col]

Just a wild guess - crabs or star?

 

[tgolbus]

Well I am down to 1 crab now.
Could 1 crab and one star (who nomally doens't look agressive) eat 3 snails in one week?

 

[poiboy]

I don't believe a skimmer being down for one week would have such a impact, though it does remove trates, Any other inverts you might have missed in your sig? 3 snails in a week is nothing could happen.

 

[cboyfan2020]

FYI, that prizm is a piece of ....save some money and get a better one. What are your other readings? Maybe crab killed snails?

 

[tyr-sog]

Originally posted by cboyfan2020
FYI, that prizm is a piece of ....save some money and get a better one. What are your other readings? Maybe crab killed snails?

No it's not. It works great. WHat leads you o beleive that?

 

[cboyfan2020]

experience...but i didn't see he only had a 26g tank so it would be fine. I have a bigger tank and would never use it again.

 

[fshhub]

crabs are more than likely eatingthe snails, it si natural
also, if they are turbo snails, and they fall off hte glass and land on hteir backe, shtey will die
30 nitrate is not bad at all and nothing to worry about, jsut make sure they do not keep going up
you could be over feeding
and the dead crab could be a number of things,
again the loss of hermits and snails is somehting not to worry about, unless they are all dying at once
how long you had them? and how old is your tank?

 

[puffygrrl]

I agree with cboyfan2020 about the Prizms - they suck in my opinion. I had one and eventually returned it and bought a CPR Bak-Pak 2R skimmer that has worked perfectly since the day I brought it home.

 

[fshhub]

prizms are not the best, but are not completely bad. admittedly the cpr is much better, IMO. But the prizm is fine for a small tank like a 20 or 30 gallon

 

[ophiura]

Keep in mind that many animals will eat the snails once they have died, and the fact that one of your crabs was actually belly up might be an indication that something was up. One hopes that things like brittlestars will clean up dead or dying snails and such. I would look into any other possibilities as to why your water quality went south so fast (assuming your nitrates were low or 0...a week without a skimmer doesn't seem quite right). Skimmers do not, BTW, remove nitrate. But they assist in removal of various things before they ultimately end up being broken down into ammonia, then nitrite, then nitrate.
Were you doing any water testing when your skimmer went?