Help with tank

[kgross]

I am having problems with a clients tank. This is one tank I just can not figure out.

Details
75 gallon tank with built in filtration, dinatrate spong filter, really poor airstone skimmer. I have a cpr backpak hanging on the tank, with a phosban reactor, no other extra filtration. The tank has a 4 inch DSB, with about 100 lbs live rock. Current lighting is 2 54 watt t5 bulbs.

Maintance is as follows 5 to 10 gallon water change weekly. replace 10 % of the rock every 2 weeks to month depending on how they look.

The problem lots of algea due to overfeeding. I can deal with that, when the owner is out of town tank looks great when he is in town tank looks like a garden.

Real problem, I can not keep snails alive in this tank. I can add 10 nassarius snails, take lots of time aclimating them, and within 2 weeks they are all dead. I add a conch a few days later dead, algea grazing snails assortment including mexican turbo, nerite, cerith, astrea, trocus etc. After adding them within 3 or 4 days 50 percent are gone, within 2 months 90 percent are gone. I can't find any traces of copper in the tank, have a polyfilter in the tank and all replacement water is from the office RO/DI . (this is in a semiconductor plant).

I have been taking care of this tank for about a year now. During this time, we have moved the tank, and replaced the substrate with new for the dsb, replaced 100 percent of the rock and have done 75 percent water changes. Still I can't keep snails alive. The tank does have some soft corals and a couple lps that when they are not smothered in algea are doing OK and growing.

Any ideas on what would be causing the snails to die or what I can do to make the tank look better other than locking it up so the owner could not feed it. Oh ya food includes dry formula one and two flakes, freezedryed mysis.

Thanks for the help

Kim

[mborn]

High nitrates can cause snails to die. What are the water parameters?

[kgross]

sg 1.025
am 0
nitrite 0
nitrate 10-20 ppm
alk 2.5 mel/eql
temp 78-79
Phosp .1

In general water par. seem OK. Nitrate is higher than I would like, which is why we do weekly water changes to help keep it down. When we first started on this tank about 9 months ago the nitrate was over 120 ppm with the water changes and better skimmer nitrate has dropped consederably and has stayed down pretty well.

Kim

[keefsama2003]

have you tested for copper. could have been dosed with copper
at one time or another. that would do the same thing

[WILDTHING]

This won't help with the deaths but have you considered having the person switch to frozen foods? You can get the ones that come in the divided frozen square packs,that way he can just pop one out thaw and feed, instead of an arbitrary amount of flake.

[kgross]

I have tested for copper plus the tank has a poly filter in it that is replaced every few months (as soon as it startes to look dark).

I will be going over there tomorrow and will run a full set of tests and post the current results here.

On the food. I have been trying to convince the owner to cut back on foods and have shown him many times how much to feed, but he will not listen. He tells me that they look hungry and he has to make sure they all get enough food.

Right now I am thinking about trying to add a fuge to the system, but the way it is setup I'm not sure if I could put a hang on anything on it and I'm not going to drill any holes in this guys tank.

To be honest I am about ready to just quit maintaining his tank, but I don't like to quit and would really like to get it going.

[Puffers]

So is it possible to upgrade the skimmer or filtration to handle the heavy nitrate load? How about an automatic fish food feeder? Perhaps instead of fighting the problem ask the client if he would like a FO with LR covered with hair algae. If so then all you would have to do is your water changes and pull some algae every once in a while.

[fservillon]

I would add a fuge, if it was me, with Chaeto to soak in nutrients. I had the same problem with my 55G, snails were just dying for no apparent reason. I added a 27G fuge/sump combo and bought 5 turbo snails to test. It's been a while and the 5 snails are still chomping on algae. Also had the benefit of keeping PH stable. I owuld also watch temp swings. I had a temp of about 82 during the day but when all lights turn off, the temp was going down to 76-78 and I am guessing that the temp swing was too much for the snails. Not an expert in any way, just my experience.
Good luck.

[Briankook]

Do you have hermit crabs? They will kill snails & take their shells.

[kgross]

There are no hermit crabs in the tank. This owner thinks that his tank is perfect because everyting worked great for him for years (or so he says) so modifing it for a fuge would not be an easy sell.

Could small amonnia/nitrite spikes be killing the snails? I was thinking about this, could it be that every Monday when the really overfeeds the tank (since it was not feed over the weeked), produce enough ammonia/nitrite to get a small spike? I don't really think there could be enough to cause a problem but I'm not sure what else could be killing the snails. And they normally only last a week or 2 when I add them into the tank.

Kim

[WILDTHING]

I don't think a small spike should kill them, loads of people put in a clean up crew before the tank is fully cycled.

[TEC1364]

Quote: "replace 10 % of the rock every 2 weeks to month depending on how they look."

Are you replacing 10% of the live rock every 2 weeks to a month?

[reef youngin]

if so u are just taking out all the de-nitrafying bacteria and thats why u hav a nitrate prob.

[kgross]

Why would changing out the rock, remove all of the de-nitrifiing bacteria? I pull out the algea covered rock, and put it in my tanks, and put clean non algea covered rocks from my tank back into his. After a week or 2 the rocks in my tank are cleaned up again and ready to go back into his tank.

Yes I replae the rock in his tank with non algea covered rock thus removing most of the algea from his tank so for a few days it looks much better.

Kim

[Katana_user]

What fish are in the tank? I've seen a wrasse bump snails off a tank's glass and eat them before. Any potential predators in there?

Are your snails from Baja or cooler water or unused to sand substrate? Kind of sounds like what Dr Ron describes here.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rs/index.htm

good luck...

[Puffers]

To help get my algae under control I got an urchin. I'm not sure if it will do well in your situation but worked great for me. They won't get the long algae but if you pull the stuff off by hand they will handle the rest.

[kgross]

This tank currently has 3 urchins in it. And they are unable to keep up with the algea growth.

As for the snails, they are tropical snails. I have put a few different trochus species, Nassarius and some differnt turbo and astria species as well as a couple of different conchs. All with the same result they do not live for longer than about a week.

Kim

[keefsama2003]

cut down on the lights on the tank changing the rock does nothing but start a new mini cycle each time you change the rock out thats not good for the tank at all your best bet is to cut back the photo period by half and then bring it up slowly over a 3 month period i had the same problem had to cut back on feeding and cut light back and the algae was then under control but removing the rock for more rock didnt help at all.

[npaden]

Kim, have you tried stomatella snails?

I don't know why corals would be doing fine and snails would be dying. Doesn't make sense to me.

[keefsama2003]

nate how ya been bud
ltns

[Kelmen]

Just an idea, as to help "diagnosis" the snails death.

The approach is put in some snails into the tank, remove them from the tank b4 the general known "deadline". Put these snails in another tank with other snails too.

If all snails in the 2nd tank all died. Likely a snail disease\parasite.

If not, obviously the problem is specific on the 1st tank only.