Inverts dying, why?
 

Hey RC members! I’m new to salt and my tank has been up for almost a year. Recently added some turbo snails, emerald crab, scarlet hermits, and a scarlet cleaner shrimp to my EXISTING clean up crew. Existing CUC is snails and hermits from reefcleaners. After about 2 weeks of adding them I’ve lost all 5 turbos, 4 newly added hermits, and my shrimp. Hermits were out of there shells dead. Shrimp was just dead, no bite marks or injury, and all 5turbos were just dead as well, still inside there shells. What could be causing this? Ammonia and nitrate readings are 0s. Water temp is 78. Running a skimmer and power heads, and HOB for Seagel and a seeding sponge. The shrimp died the day after adding Seagel in my HOB but was eating well. I fed it Prime Reef Flakes during tank feedings. The other inverts died before adding Seagel. All fish are doing well. I don’t know if it’s the Emerald killing them off at night but none have had any visible injuries except the hermits outta there shells.

I’m clueless:confused:

No blobs of snot near the dead inverts?

Not that I saw. What the heck would that be?

There's a type of worm, oeneda fulgida (sp?) that only eats inverts. They only come out at night, and they retract at the slightest amount of light or vibration, so are often very hard to see.

The one clue they routinely leave behind though is a tell tale blob of mucus surrounding the dead invert. (which is how they suffocate/paralyze their prey)

If you start losing inverts for no obvious reason and see globs of what looks like snot near the empty shells, that's your likely culprit.

Hmmm. That’s something I will defiantly look for next time but no snot blobs here.

Were all inverts bought from the same place/time? Shipped or LFS? Might have been a "bad batch." How did you acclimate them to the tank?

My turbos started dying starting with the largest one. Took me a while to realize there wasn’t enough of a food source until I put seaweed in for them.


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They were were LA.

Exactly was I was thinking but there is plenty of hair algae to eat. Oh how I hate hair algae :headwally:

What’s the specific gravity in the tank?.

What's your magnesium read? I hear high mag will kill inverts. I had a few die and through research and conversation found that out...and I tested. Mine was between 1650 and 1800. I never dose it, just that batch of salt had high mag. Good luck. Let us know.

Maggie

I suspect something in the water. Time to do a big water change IMO and bring your water in to a local LFS for an extensive test if you don't have a good testing kit at home.

Also when you added in the inverts, did you drip acclimate them? Did you make sure the salt gravity was the same? Snails are actually pretty sensitive to water changes like most inverts are. Most people don't drip or float them but they also end up getting a lot of die off and it doesn't happen right away. Sometimes it takes a week.