Want to become more than Fish only

T

trav_d

Travis
Jan 19, 2009
3
0
0
Ohio
Hello everyone, I first want to say what a great forum:thm:
This is the first time I have ever posted on any forum so please bear with me. I currently have a 75 gallon saltwaters aquarium that I have had up and running for almost a year and have been trying to proceed very slowly as to not mess anything up. I currently have 2 clowns, 2 zebra damsels, a blue damsel, a pink tail trigger, and a white faced tang, along with about 20 pounds of live rock. I have a wet dry filter, protein skimmer, and a koralia power head for water movement. The trigger and tang have only been added recently, but I want to start adding some invertebrates such as snails and crabs, etc. The only supplement I have added to my tank is "purple up" to promote coralline algae which it has done very well. I am planning on adding a UV Sterilizer within the next week or so. This is my problem, After about 2 months of my tank up and running, I purchased some snails and crabs for my tank and within a month they were all dead. I do not know why. I have not lost a single fish since starting the tank. I had been using tap water to make my salt mix and I thought that might be the cause. I am also planning on buying a RO/DI filter since I heard this is the best way to go. O.k. to the question, could the tap water have been the cause of the problem, and once I do implement an RO filter, how many water changes will I need to do before the water would be o.k. for inverts?
Thank you in advance for any help you could give.
 
Welcome to AC Travis :).
I believe triggers eat snails and crabs, so if you add any more they may get eaten anyway. Someone with experience in triggers may know more though.

But you were saying the snails and crabs were dying before you added the trigger. Invertebrates are more sensitive to heavy metals, salinity etc than fish, generally speaking. Have you ever treated with copper? Did you acclimitise the snails and crabs? How long for? What are all your parameters ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, salinity, ph, temperature etc?
 
This was about 10 months ago, so I am not sure what all the parameters were then. I have never added any chemicals other than the "purple up". I did acclimatise the inverts for a few hours before completely putting them in the tank. The water parameters should have been pretty good since the tank was only about 2 months old and water changes were done regularly.
As
 
Whoops accidentally hit enter.
As to the Trigger, everything I have read is that he is the most docile of all triggers, and I thought snails and crabs would be o.k. due to their shells.
 
Triggers, no matter how docile people say they are, they feed on shrimp, crabs and snails. So with purchasing of these, you must keep in mind that you might see them as one thing, and the fish sees it as food.
Shells, while they are protection from most fish if you have ever seen an adult trigger with a showing teeth you will see that with all things considered it is lunch time.

Now getting along to other things dying. If you do not see carcasses of the snails and crabs then you must put into consideration that there is something wrong within the tank.
Snails like most invertebrates are very sensitive to water conditions. They cannot survive in tanks that have used copper medication. This would be our equivalent to cyanide. Not a good thing to have in a tank. You did state previously that you only had your tank set up at the time for 2 months when you last added snails and crabs. Now out of all curiosity, did you have enough live rock for them to pick at and eat things from? Did you feed the crabs? If the answer is no for both of these questions, then the only logical answer is, you and your tank was not ready to properly house them.
While crabs need to pick at rock on an ongoing search for food, if there is nothing else to help supply them with food they will eventually starve and die.
Snails the same, however if the tank did not have enough algae to sustain them, then there would be no reason that you would have asked that question.
 
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