My snails keep dying!!

[Sharkbait19]

I lost another snail, my Mexican turbo snail. This is the third snail I’ve lost since I started my fallow period, along with a margarita snail and a cerith snail. Why do my snails keep dying?? Are they starving? What can I do to keep them alive?

 

[lapin]

Do you have enough algae? Did you treat your tank with something (ie.. reason for fallow period)?
I feed my turbo algae sheets

 

[ShepherdReefer]

What are your parameters such as Ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, ph, salinity, phosphates, etc..? Parameters that aren't within specs can cause them to die, or even as lapin suggested, not enough algae.

 

[Sharkbait19]

Do you have enough algae? Did you treat your tank with something (ie.. reason for fallow period)?
I feed my turbo algae sheets

I truly think it has to do with little algae—there’s some on the walls but not a lot on the rocks or sand.
I didn’t treat the tank for anything, if by that you mean copper meds or ich meds.
For ammonia, I could run tests but my corals ain’t reacting. My shrimp died a few days ago but he wasn’t looking too hot for a while. I’ll check tomorrow.

 

[lapin]

The shrimp might have not had any meaty food. They can eat quite a lot.

 

[pseudorand]

I truly think it has to do with little algae—there’s some on the walls but not a lot on the rocks or sand.
I didn’t treat the tank for anything, if by that you mean copper meds or ich meds.
For ammonia, I could run tests but my corals ain’t reacting. My shrimp died a few days ago but he wasn’t looking too hot for a while. I’ll check tomorrow.

I believe snails are more sensitive than corals to some things, possible ammonia.

I had QT that I stocked with 9 frags, 6 astrea snails and a emerald crab. All the frags made it to display. 5 of the 6 astrea snails and the emerald crab did not. Ammonia wasn't detectable with my API kit. But when I got fish after the invert QT was done, they got sick too. I got a seachem ammonia alert (I highly recommend them) and I'm pretty sure ammonia was the problem based on that.

The tank had also had copper in it from a previous fish QT (turns out you can't get rid of copper no matter how much you rinse), so I originally assumed it was the copper. But since the fish got sick, I now think it was ammonia -- just never had enough to properly cycle even with media from the DT.

Either way, corals are hardier that snails and crabs to something.