White crust

[msouth468]

Some of the bladder snails and Ramshorns in my tank have a white crust on thier shells. The bladders have it mostly on the tip of the shells and the ramshorns have it all over thier shells. My assasins look like they have it on the tips of thier shells as well. Does anyone know what it is?http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a355/msouth468/SD530535.jpg

[Flaringshutter]

Hey msouth, this is a sign of water that is too soft or pH that's too low. It's not a crust, it is actually the water wearing away at their shells - deterioration, not buildup. What is the pH of your water? You may need to supplement the tank with calcium or crushed coral.

[msouth468]

It looks like my water is soft. The ph is right a 7.0 and my TDS show 224ppm. So should I use crushed coral or calcium? Where do I get the calcium at?

[BettaFishMommy]

you can supply the snails with calcium via snail jello. the Jurassi-Cal brand is one that i have seen recommended. there is a sticky in the invert section on here with a few good recipes. you can also add crushed coral to your filter media to bring up the ph of the tank. i apologize, i can't give you advice on the crushed coral as i have no experience with that.

you can also just drop some tums in the tank. concensus is that they like the berry flavoured ones best, lol. mind you, in order for the calcium in the tums to actually work, the snails have to eat the tums. i've read that some calcium is absorbed by the foot of the snail (the soft part), but probably not enough would be absorbed to correct the problem you are having.

[Flaringshutter]

bettafishmommy, calcium is absorbed directly from the water column as well as through food. as far as i know, neither one nor the other is the main source. snails get calcium wherever they can! :)

msouth, your pH is just on the low end, but not too bad. I would probably try some crushed coral in the filter to bump up your buffering capacity - you can get bags of it in the marine or substrate section of most LFS - and you might try adding liquid calcium to the water. this can also be found in the marine section. i use Kent's Liquid Calcium for reef tanks. another great method is adding powdered calcium directly to the snail food if you are feeding snail jello, as bettafishmommy said.

i would probably try a combination of these methods. adding calcium to the food will help strengthen the shells from the inside. crushed coral will help prevent the water from wearing away at the shell, and liquid calcium will do a little of both.

[msouth468]

Well, I got some calcium pills (no vitamin D) from walmart and I'm going to start supplimenting with them for now. I have to wait until the weekend to get to a pet store to get some crushed coral.

Does soft water affect ghost shrimp? I had some of them that died really quick after I bought them.

Edit: Well, that might fix the problem, the snails are swarming all over the calcium pills.