Snail success/failure???

[Hitman1]

Hi All,

I have had a fairly poor success rate in keeping snails alive in my tank and from reading other posts, I am not the only one. Everything is thriving in my tank, so why are my snails dying off? All my parameters are within normal ranges, my hermit crabs(blue leg and red scarlet), 4 fish and 2 corals are all happy and leave the snails alone.

My LR have some hair algae, an occasional bubble algae and this brownish red algae that forms everywhere where there is not any strong current. Don't know what it is called but you can brush it off my making a little current with your hands. It covers everything like dust. Can one of these algaes be poisoning the snails? How do you keep your snails alive?

[phild]

I recently lost some snails for a simple reason that took forever for me to figure out. Long story short, my SG was low. My meter was not reading the salinity correctly. I bumped up the SG slowly over a week or two, and now snails are happy in my tank.

I am not sure if this could be your problem because your corals are fine, but it might be worth a check to bring a sample to LFS or measure it with a friends meter.

[Guy]

Snails are very sensitive to salinity changes (and low salinity as phild pointed out). When you do water changes make sure the salinity is close to the tank water and topoff with freshwater very slowly (dripping is best).

Snails are also extremely sensitive to copper.

[Hitman1]

My tank is a 72g with about 80lbs of LR so I am not sure how much water is in my tank. Usually when I topoff with freshwater, I just pour in a gallon straight into the tank. I didn't think that adding 1g to a 72g setup would make much difference in the SG level. Never measured the before and after levels... Statically, if you add 1g of water to 50g of water, you are diluting your 50g by 2%. If your SG level is 1.025, I would expect it to drop to 1.0245. However, the drip method is probable 100% better then just dumping it in.

Assuming that my SG level is good (1.025), what else could be the cause? What range of SG is preferable for snails, is it higher then other tank inhabitants.

[generalee]

No one mentioned trace elements. Do you add iodine to the tank? If not you should.

[Pomacanthus1]

Iodine or iodide isn't necessary to keep anything, IMHO. Some people think they're beneficial, but i didn't see any difference when i used it on my tank for a month.

How long did you acclimate the snails for? Like Guy said, they are extremely sensitive to changes in salinity, and need to be acclimated for at least 3 hours, or they will probably die.

What kind of snails are they? Some snails, like astrea and turbo, seem to have a shorter lifespan than other snails.

[desktopsilver]

maybee you have to many snails,,,i have like 15 or so in a 70 and they all are doing great for like 8 months,,,once i ordered a hole bunch and alot perished leaving behind what my tank could support ,,i also ordered a bunch of hermits and i think they had a turf war with the snails,,,i dont have anymore hermits as i took them out and no more dead snails

[cloak]

Another way to acclimate snails for a long period of time is to leave them in the bag they came in. Float the bag and reach underneath the water and make a small cut with a razor blade, maybe a half inch or so.
Try not to push to hard when cutting the bag cause you don't want to force the air out. Let it sit for about 6 hours and your good to go.

FWIW....