Snail Trouble

[yannifish]

Well, I bought two astrea snails a couple days ago and now they are dead. I have plenty of brown algea on the back wall of my tank. Any ideas why they died? The tank is 3 1/2 weeks old, and has three hermits in it that have been in there for about 2 weeks.
Nitrites-0
Nitrates-0
Ammonia-0
pH-8.2
Any ideas?

 

[fish crazy]

me to i have had no luck with snails i have at least bot 10 and they all just die, it gets me so mad

 

[hypertek99]

Did you see it die with the shell empty or the snail is still in it??? If empty your hermits might be eating them. And what is the temp of you tank???

 

[travis89]

whats your salinity?

 

[yannifish]

Well, I saw my hermits eating one, but i don't think they killed it. My salinity is 35 ppt. Acually, one is just in its shell, with the door closed, so I can't tell whether its dead or not, but is been that way for 3 dyas, so i assumed its dead.

 

[lecithin]

when you say brown algae, you don't mean diatoms do you? They don't bother with that stuff. I'm thinking since your tank is 3.5 weeks old thats your diatom bloom, maybe I'm wrong though.... can't see why else your tank would be covered in algae.

 

[yannifish]

Do diatoms drow on the glass? If so, thats most likely what it is. I thought the snails whould eat it. I knew the brown algea on my base rock and sand bed where diatoms, but didn't know if it grew in the glass. It feels like slime, but disolves when you touch it. Will this go away? My hermits will eat the stuff on the sand bed and on the rocks. Any ideas?

 

[m0nk]

Well, what you described that's sort of slimy and dissolves when you touch it sounds like cyano. They only snail that will eat this is possibly the cerith, if they get really hungry. Cyano isn't actually a type of algae, although it's commonly referred to as red/green slime algae. Cyano is common in new tanks, though it's likely unrelated to the dying snails. How long did you acclimate them? Did you happen to check the salinity of the tanks they came from at your LFS? They die a slow death if they were acclimated too fast, which would be anything less than 2 hours.

 

[yannifish]

Is cyano bad? And I acclimated them the way I was told by the lfs, float them for a half hour. Now I find out you always have to drip acclimate inverts

. That still doesn't explain why one lived a few days, and thats how I acclimated my hermits, and they're fine.

 

[m0nk]

Originally Posted by yannifish
Is cyano bad? And I acclimated them the way I was told by the lfs, float them for a half hour. Now I find out you always have to drip acclimate inverts

. That still doesn't explain why one lived a few days, and thats how I acclimated my hermits, and they're fine.
Well, as I said, they die a slow death. It can actually come to a couple weeks too.
Cyano is bad to an extent, it will only kill things if it gets way out of control and covers all surfaces, etc. There are a bunch of ways to deal with it and a bunch of reasons it's there. I'd suggest doing a search on the boards here to find out more. Search for cyanobacteria or just cyano.

 

[yannifish]

Originally Posted by m0nk
Well, as I said, they die a slow death. It can actually come to a couple weeks too.
Cyano is bad to an extent, it will only kill things if it gets way out of control and covers all surfaces, etc. There are a bunch of ways to deal with it and a bunch of reasons it's there. I'd suggest doing a search on the boards here to find out more. Search for cyanobacteria or just cyano.
Well, I'll look it up. I did a water change today, and scraped some off the sides with the siphon.

 

[chaoscat]

From what I've read, snails are very vulnerable to changes in salinity. It is not unusual to lose new snails upon transfer to a new tank. If you buy them from the lfs, you can try drip acclimating them sl-o-o-o-wly. If you're ordering by mail, order extras, as they will likely come bagged with wet newspaper and there's no way to acclimate them.

 

[yannifish]

Originally Posted by Chaoscat
If you're ordering by mail, order extras, as they will likely come bagged with wet newspaper and there's no way to acclimate them.
The send them in wet newspaper?!?! How do they survive?!?!

 

[chaoscat]

This is a common way for snails, crabs and other inverts to be shipped into your LFS.
When animals are shipped they respire normally as long as their gills are wet. If they are immersed in sea water, and they have a reasonably high metabolic rate (snails, clams, crustaceans, many worms), they will rapidly exhaust the oxygen from the sea water and fill the sea water with carbon dioxide. This gas is exchanged at the water surface in the bag, mostly by diffusion and some by turbulence. This is a very slow way to replenish oxygen.. Assuming some motion in the bag, this water will be partially mixed, but it will always be lower oxygen tension than is normal or optimal. Sometimes very much lower. This REALLY stresses the animal. Recovery at the end of this treatment is always somewhat iffy.
If the animals are kept moist in 100 percent humidity air, the gills are covered by a thin film of water, both carbon dioxide and oxygen can diffuse rapidly through this thin layer and the animals will survive a whole lot better than if kept submerged in water. The animals suffer no oxygen deficit and remain inactive as well. They basically just "wait it out." When put in water at the far end of the trip, they are "supposedly" ready to go...

 

[en_pissant]

Sounds like you definitely have cyanobacteria. Not the end of the world, but still unsightly. It's actually a missing link between algae and bacteria, and is thought to be one of the original "primoidial ooze" type lifeforms. I'd say you have something misbalanced, but that's not uncommon in a new tank.
I can almost guarantee that your hermits are killing those snails. I've tried astreas and turbos, and the hermits just pick at them incessantly until they can finally dig them out of their shell. I sat down and watched my tank when it was new for hours. The hermits climb on the snails, you can watch the snails stry to spin them off, but eventually the hermits get 'em.
I went with the scarlet hermits at the recommendation of several people, and have had much better luck with them. They don't seem as good at removing detritus, or churning the substrate, but they don't eat the snails. They also seem more nocturnal than other hermits, which can be a bit annoying.

 

[yannifish]

Well, as far as the cyanobacteria goes, I'm going to wait to see if it goes away on its own, and if not I'll have to get some kind of additive to get rid of it. Any suggestions?
And abou the snail, I really don't think the hermits killed it. They deffinitly ate one, and the other is in its shell, but I think its dead.