Why have my inverts been struggling?

[KleineVampir]

The past 6 months or so I've tried a lot of different inverts but it seems like the only ones who really make it are the cleaner shrimp, thankfully. As cool as they are, I also have GHA problems in the tank that I'm trying to solve with the combination of a skimmer and an algae scrubber. I think the tank would be pretty messy at this point no matter what, but I think that it would look better if the clean-up crew were having a better time of it.

So why have they not been making it? Snails, hermit crabs...but a lot of hermit crabs have apparently not made it. I had 100 in there a while ago and now it's like it never even happened. You might find 1 or 2 hermits in there if you're lucky. Are hermits really that hard to keep?

Possible culprits:

-Dosing a bunch of NoPox, more than I should have. I hope that's what happened because I'm not using that anymore.
-The calcium and alkalinity not being very high. I measured about 320 calcium and 7 alkalinity. Both a little low but not terrible to my knowledge.
-Not acclimating the hermits and snails, or not for long enough.

Pretty sad when you can't even get astreas or blue leg hermits to survive in your tank. You'd think those would be pretty basic. What am I missing here?

 

[Flippers4pups]

The past 6 months or so I've tried a lot of different inverts but it seems like the only ones who really make it are the cleaner shrimp, thankfully. As cool as they are, I also have GHA problems in the tank that I'm trying to solve with the combination of a skimmer and an algae scrubber. I think the tank would be pretty messy at this point no matter what, but I think that it would look better if the clean-up crew were having a better time of it.

So why have they not been making it? Snails, hermit crabs...but a lot of hermit crabs have apparently not made it. I had 100 in there a while ago and now it's like it never even happened. You might find 1 or 2 hermits in there if you're lucky. Are hermits really that hard to keep?

Possible culprits:

-Dosing a bunch of NoPox, more than I should have. I hope that's what happened because I'm not using that anymore.
-The calcium and alkalinity not being very high. I measured about 320 calcium and 7 alkalinity. Both a little low but not terrible to my knowledge.
-Not acclimating the hermits and snails, or not for long enough.

Pretty sad when you can't even get astreas or blue leg hermits to survive in your tank. You'd think those would be pretty basic. What am I missing here?

What fish do you have?

 

[WVNed]

I had no success with inverts until I added Iodine. I used Kent essential elements for about a decade to do this.

 

[Lizbeli]

What do you use as a water source/have you checked your rodi system to see if you need new filters? My first thought is some kind of contaminate in the water. Inverts are normally more sensitive to this.

 

[BloopFish]

Any other algae in the system? Any other filtration media in the system? Certain algae like dinos and cyano can be toxic. Some things can leach copper which is very toxic to inverts. You might also have an iodine problem like outlined. For a 100 hermit crabs, how large is your tank?

 

[KleineVampir]

Interesting that you guys would mention Iodine. I have some trace elements I can put in the tank but they aren't very specific to iodine. Does anybody know why iodine matters to inverts so much?

I guess it could be copper from the RO/DI system. Then again, the big filter on top tends to turn red, which should indicate iron rather than copper...right?

As far as other algae, I don't believe I have dino or cyano. Just gha, basic film algae, bubble algae, and cotton candy algae (yum!).

 

[KleineVampir]

The display is a 40b but the system has about 60 gallons in it since I have a 20 gallon sump, and a 5 gallon HOB fuge.

 

[BloopFish]

Hermits can also easi

Interesting that you guys would mention Iodine. I have some trace elements I can put in the tank but they aren't very specific to iodine. Does anybody know why iodine matters to inverts so much?

I guess it could be copper from the RO/DI system. Then again, the big filter on top tends to turn red, which should indicate iron rather than copper...right?

As far as other algae, I don't believe I have dino or cyano. Just gha, basic film algae, bubble algae, and cotton candy algae (yum!).

Iodine in high concentration are toxic to crustaceans, it is stored in their shells and it will force a molt. A bad molt can cause them to die.

 

[WVNed]

I have a few inverts
I do not dose iodine but I do add trace elements that has iodine in it.
One of the old snails

Today's molts are stone crab and coral banded shrimp

My sump crab and his molt.

He is much bigger now.
Actually I have lots of inverts.
Including hairy scary crab. One of these released babies into the flow.

I do not know if it is the iodine or something else in the formula but I have recently gone from adding Kent essential elements once a week to Tropic Marin trace 1 and 2 every day on a doser.
I absolutely believe it makes a difference in how well your inverts do. I am waiting on an ICP result to make sure it is doing what I want. I did one last year when using the Kent and it was good.

Free advice on the internet. Use at your own risk.

 

[KleineVampir]

Yeah I'm gonna try the kent one. I dumped a bunch of trace elements in there...probably a bit too much but hopefully it will be ok.

 

[WVNed]

Follow the directions on the bottle. More is not better. In fact if you do small water changes use half what it says. None is bad, some is good and too much is bad.

 

[vetteguy53081]

No-pox can cause more issues than it can help
Some causes may be:
-Acclimation. Very important with inverts
-Salinity.... too high or too low
-Calcium levels .... ca needed for shell structure
-Other predators
-Lack of food source

 

[KleineVampir]

Follow the directions on the bottle. More is not better. In fact if you do small water changes use half what it says. None is bad, some is good and too much is bad.

Yeah I probably glorped in a bit too much. Definitely one solid glorp. Dunno why I spazzed out and did that but I did. Hopefully given it's a 60 gallon system it'll be fine.

 

[KleineVampir]

No-pox can cause more issues than it can help
Some causes may be:
-Acclimation. Very important with inverts
-Salinity.... too high or too low
-Calcium levels .... ca needed for shell structure
-Other predators
-Lack of food source

Perhaps you're right about acclimation. Salinity has always been fine in that tank. I very rarely check it because it just never changes. It's about 1.026 I think but I could check again. Calcium, yeah. Do you think 320 is low to the point where crabs and such actually start dying because of it? Shouldn't be any predators. Given the huge amount of GHA and other algae in the tank you wouldn't think the blue legs would be starving to death. Besides there should be some detritus seeing as how I've never vacuumed the dang sand bed.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Perhaps you're right about acclimation. Salinity has always been fine in that tank. I very rarely check it because it just never changes. It's about 1.026 I think but I could check again. Calcium, yeah. Do you think 320 is low to the point where crabs and such actually start dying because of it? Shouldn't be any predators. Given the huge amount of GHA and other algae in the tank you wouldn't think the blue legs would be starving to death. Besides there should be some detritus seeing as how I've never vacuumed the dang sand bed.

Calcium best around 400
A big glirp of the nopox likely did a number on the current phos/no3.
Acclimation should last well over an hour, even two

 

[KleineVampir]

Oh. I was talking about trace elements. I'm not using NoPox anymore.

 

[KleineVampir]

Anybody know any good hardy inverts that eat hair algae? Maybe even something that can breed. I'd like to get some kind of baseline of cleanup crew going that actually stays alive. Maybe trochus snails?

Or also, the kent trace elements doesn't have iodine in it. Do you guys think it's worth getting an iodine-only supplement? Seems like the tank used to be able to sustain inverts better and has gotten worse over time despite not much changing except the calcium deficiency and so forth that I mentioned before.

 

[KleineVampir]

Oh I see. So the kent trace elements does have iodine, in the form of potassium iodide. It's also said that algae takes up a lot of iodine, about 1% of its biomass. And this is a 0 water change tank where I remove a lot of algae.

 

[KleineVampir]

Does anybody know what the effect of calc, alk, and magnesium have on snails and inverts in general? About how sensitive are they to those?

 

[KleineVampir]

Ok so now I have the Ca, Kh, and Mg all up to about where they should be. Calcium a little high at 450 but should be ok. Alk about 7.5. Magnesium 1400. But the turbos I just got still look like they're getting worse. But why?

Is it because I dose 3 teaspoons of soda ash every other day? Is it a bad idea to add that much at one time? Nothing I add to the sump should affect the display too quickly, because my pumps aren't even that strong and the water goes into a 5 gallon fuge before it actually even goes into the display. Also it's a 60 gallon system. You wouldn't think 3 teaspoons of soda ash would totally destroy all the inverts. So what is it??