Bacteria and water changes

[Reef.]

I personally wouldn’t bother with the ammonia alert, chances are the cuc would die before you could take action anyway as they tend to be more sensitive to ammonia then fish.
Fresh salt mix has a little ammonia but I would maybe limit the amount of cuc as in a 13.5g and no fish you are going to struggle to keep them fed unless adding food, then your nutrients will keep getting out of control.
Cuc die easily too so that will also need watching as that too will raise you ammonia.

 

[rmorris_14]

Yes, if nitrite is increasing, ammonia is being oxidized. That should be a comfort.

How are critters looking? Active? Curled in the corner?

Active, especially the turbos.. I did find one blue leg hermit dead not in its shell on the sand bed an hour ago . There was another one that was alive and crawling around without it shell as well. So I don’t know if they got in a shell war or if it was totally random. I got the alive one to get in a new shell. I have plenty of extra shells laying around for them to choose, so I’m leaning toward random casualty. The rest of them are crawling around fine, including some that are much smaller. I would assume those would be harmed by imbalance first?

 

[rmorris_14]

I also just siphoned out more snail poop, did a water change and added 2/3 dose of bacteria. I’m going to let it ride out from here and just try to manage the snail waste.

 

[rmorris_14]

I personally wouldn’t bother with the ammonia alert, chances are the cuc would die before you could take action anyway as they tend to be more sensitive to ammonia then fish.
Fresh salt mix has a little ammonia but I would maybe limit the amount of cuc as in a 13.5g and no fish you are going to struggle to keep them fed unless adding food, then your nutrients will keep getting out of control.
Cuc die easily too so that will also need watching as that too will raise you ammonia.

Yes you are 100 right about limiting. I made the mistake of buying the amount of clean up crew I wanted to have between both the DT and the QT as back up. Also the owner convinced me that my tanks could support more turbos and Nass snails than my better judgement believes. So for now the QT is over loaded until I can move some them over.

 

[Dan_P]

Active, especially the turbos.. I did find one blue leg hermit dead not in its shell on the sand bed an hour ago . There was another one that was alive and crawling around without it shell as well. So I don’t know if they got in a shell war or if it was totally random. I got the alive one to get in a new shell. I have plenty of extra shells laying around for them to choose, so I’m leaning toward random casualty. The rest of them are crawling around fine, including some that are much smaller. I would assume those would be harmed by imbalance first?

I don’t know how sensitive the inverts are, but active ones that are eating is good news in my book.

 

[rmorris_14]

I don’t know how sensitive the inverts are, but active ones that are eating is good news in my book.

Also I’m pretty sure the hermit I found might have been a molt.
Another one just did the same thing and it’s very convincing. I forgot about that