Hyposalinity and Invertebrates.

[jr1053]

:help:

Two weeks ago I had an outbreak of Ich and decided to try to go with hyposalinity - 1.009 after use of RxP once again turned out to be a complete failure. Anyway I had several dozen Nassarius snails which I removed and placed in a small 10 gallon tank till the low salt treatment was over. Over the last day or two I've seen some snails which I overlooked and remained in my main tank. They seem to be healthy and active. Are these kind of snails known to survive low salinity conditions? Would it be safe to retu1rn the rest of them back into the main tank also?? Any comments are appreciated. Thanks!!
John

Ps. Please excuse all the emoticons but my girls insist on placing them on all my messages :notsure:

 

[usinkit]

I dont know if those type of snails are hardier but they survived. If the tanks salanity is back up I would put them back in. Make sure to acclimate them though. If the salanity is not back up I would wait until it is. hth

 

[airforceb2]

Nassarius snails are very hardy snails. They probably burried themselves during the process so they wouldn't have been as affected. As stated...get the SG back up to 1.025 before you put the rest of them in the tank.

 

[drea]

i'm in the process of hypo right now too, all the fish are looking great... i just hope ich dosen't return

 

[jr1053]

Thanks for all the help folks. Much appreciated.

 

[sgdeb]

Agreed. Hardy or not, inverts do not usually do well with reduced salinity... (When I went thru hypo, my ST was full of LR and inverts, so I moved all fish to QT and let ST go fallow.) Like AirForce said, I wouldn't subject the snails already removed to the lower salinity. Just keep your fingers crossed for those you left in the tank, and add the others after you have completed the process...

 

[ophiura]

It can also sometimes take time for the impact of this to show up. The metabolism of some animals is such that exposured can take time to appear - seastars are notorious, for example, for taking about a month to show signs of osmotic shock.

 

[farslayer]

How could being buried in sand protect something from hyposalinity? Salt will be distributed evenly inside of the tank regardless of where something hides. I agree with Ophiura, they have either managed to hold strong or will just end up dying inside of a month or so. The LFS had a lot of trouble with their inverts before they started doing drip acclimation; their starfish would be fine for a couple of weeks and then begin to disintegrate starting at the arms, i.e. acclimatic shock.