33 Gallon Reef

[Sidius]

I appreciate the concern and have watched all those videos. I certainly did not buy a clean up crew package. I've slowly acquired the snails I have over time, as needed. I do have over 20 snails, 5 hermits and a fire shrimp but a large percentage are small Cerith snails and I definitely don't feel I've gone way overboard for my tank. I will keep your advice in mind and I may give a few snails away if I feel my system matures to the point that they aren't getting fed.

I have watched more YouTube content and videos than I care to admit over the years lol, read more and more articles every day about every aspect of a reef system and have several conversations every week with a friend who has been keeping salt water systems for a very long time. I feed a rotation/combination of frozen brine shrimp with spirulina, nori, frozen mysis, Vitalis pellets and reef roids. Obviously not all on the same day, but like to switch it up a bit. I've been researching making my own food mix with fresh clams, mussels, mysis etc. but I just haven't found the time to go shopping with a 16 month old always on the go lol.

All that being said, it is most definitely possible that a snail died and caused the nutrient spike. I haven't found much info out there that supports removing chaeto being a cause of a nutrient spike, other than the odd person mentioning that there system takes a few days to a week to re-balance itself after removing it from their refugium. None of which said anything else about what they mean by "re-balance itself". It was merely meant as an observation since it happened so soon after removing it for the first time.

Sent from my SM-N960W using Tapatalk