why did my nitrates spike and kill my snails?

[no1odie]

I noticed when I got home that most of my snails were on their backs and not looking good. Checked my levels and the only thing out of the ordinary is my nitrates. Why did this happaen?

 

[watson3]

Did you flip them back over...Seriously..Snails roll all the time, and you just flip them back

 

[alyssia]

What is your salinity? How long have you had the snails?

 

[no1odie]

my salinity is at 1.021 and 1.022 and i have had the snails about a month

 

[travis89]

You need to get your salinity up to 1.025-1.026. I would try flipping them back over, once they fall on their backs they can't flip themselves back over.

 

[alyssia]

Yeah, you definitely need to get the salinity up. Don't do it too quickly though. How high are your trates?

 

[ophiura]

It is highly unlikely your nitrates killed your snails. Your specific gravity is a major concern for sure. What are your other parameters? What is the temperature? Nitrates would not spike that high, that fast, resulting in trouble with your snails. How many snails are involved here?

 

[no1odie]

My temp is between 78 and 80 depending on when the lights are on, and my trates at the last check were between 0 and 5 ppm, and were talking about ten snails. i turned them over last night before went to bed and they still aren't looking good. too much of there body exposed. and none of the crabs got any of them last night. really confused, not sure what went wrong. everyone else is doing just fine

 

[bang guy]

A combination of low Salinity and starvation IMO.

 

[ophiura]

Are 10 snails ALL your snails?
Do you dose the tank with anything? I am really not willing to abandon the copper issue yet if this happened suddenly and is impacting all your snails at once. Different inverts may have different tolerances.
It certainly is not your nitrate.

 

[no1odie]

no i have not doesed my tank with anything, someone thinks that i might have starved them. I guess this could be a posibility, because i have some good algea eaters n my fish population,

 

[ophiura]

Yes, but it is unusual to me that they would ALL die basically at once. There is individual variation - even in terms of salinity tolerance and such. If ALL your snails are dying at once, I would look to some sort of outside cause, personally. Starvation is always somewhat of an option.