Snails keep dying

saullman · Jul 24, 2019

So I refreshed my clean-up crew about 3 weeks ago. I purchased 10 trochus snails. Today so far, I have lost about half of them. Is this normal with snails where they die very fast or is my tank telling me there is something wrong?

sfin52 · Jul 24, 2019

IMO snails dont ship well. How are you acclimating them? That will play a part. Do you have any hermits?

saullman · Jul 24, 2019

sfin52 said:
IMO snails dont ship well. How are you acclimating them? That will play a part. Do you have any hermits?

I just temp acclimate them. Is this correct or am I not acclimating them correctly?

I had hermits, but got rid of them because they kept eating all my snails.

Billldg · Jul 24, 2019

I temp acclimate them for 30 or so minutes and then I drip acclimate them slowly for another hour before I add them to my tank. Invertebrates do not do well with sudden changes to parameters, especially after being shipped.

sfin52 · Jul 24, 2019

Temp than acclimate them over 2hrs I still loose some. I did your way and mortality was close to 70%

Billldg · Jul 24, 2019

Yea, I still loose them over time, but this last batch I got several months ago I dripped them very slowly as I also added a star fish, which r notorious for dying if not acclimated verb slowly, and only had a loss percentage of about 10 to 20 percent, but then my trochus snails breed and all of them survived which created and problem with over population.

sfin52 · Jul 24, 2019

How the inverts are handled through the process is a huge contributor in mortality rates as well.

saullman · Jul 24, 2019

Ok. That's all good info. I am going to replace them again, but this time I will do a slow drip as well as temp acclimate.

tdlawdo · Jul 24, 2019

If shipped overnight or longer the slow drop acclimation exposes them to high Ammonia for a longer period so that can cause burn and melt

saullman · Jul 25, 2019

The weird thing is that they do not die right away. They are dying after being in my tank for a few weeks. I'm not sure if it's my water quality or something else that I'm doing wrong.