Proper way to introduce hermits and snails to the tank?

N

Nickeleye

AC Members
Apr 13, 2004
144
0
0
Visit site
So today I bought 3 Scarlet Hermits and 3 Trochus snails at the LFS today. This by no means will be my entire cleanup crew, but I wanted to start the cleanup for two reasons.
1. The tank is ready
2. I think I still may have a Mantis in the tank, but I want to find out if it's that or the Pistol I put back in (or both)... essentially using them as bait.

If everything lives, that's a plus, but if things start dying off because of something else (the mantis), I'd rather find out now than with 60+ worth of cleanup crew critters in the tank.

So back to my question... what's the best way to put them in? I did already put them in, but here's how I did it. I first let both bags float in the tank for approx. 10 min. Then, I introduced a few squirts of my tank water into the bags from my tank with the turkey baster and let the bags sit in the tank another 5 or so minutes with the lights off. Finally, I placed each snail and crab into the tank (not pouring LFS water into the tank).

I have no idea if that was overkill or if I did something wrong. Can anybody let me know for future reference?
 
The animals should get a longer acclimation. All mine get floated at least 15 min in a closed bag, then a small amount of water added to the bag every 10 minutes for 1 to 1.5 hours. Sometime in the middle, I dump off excess water into the sink.

To give a little perspective, many, if not most, would call my acclimation too hasty. It's common to use a drip into a bucket for 2 hours, and Dr Mac recommends 6-8 hours for molluscs.

Your guys will probably be OK, but there is a prevailing theory that a lot of unexplained snail deaths are due to hasty acclimation.
 
Whoops! Well, I hope they will be ok. At least they didn't cost a fortune. I'll be more careful next time.
 
I got a bunch of stuff in yesterday. I just put everything in a small (dedicated) 3 gallon bucket in the water they ship in. I'll put in a tiny powerhead or airstone, and keep the lighting subdued.

Then I test the shipping water for pH and specific gravity just to see how far apart we are- that result determines how long I acclimate. The stuff I got in yesterday arrived with a pH of 7.8 !!

Then I just set up a simple siphon with a piece of airline tubing with a knot in it. I pulled the knot tight enough to give me around one drip per second, clothes-pinned the line to my bucket (learned this the hard way) and let her drip. Every half hour or so I remove water from the container and discard it.
Time flies this way- you can mess around in the tank, cook dinner, whatever- until the time has passed- I left these for three hours. Then I simply place them in the tank.

Please note that if you have temperature issues you may need to float your bags. My ambient room temps are right on with the tank temps so I don't have to worry too much about that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom