Snail Graveyard

[Quinn]

Hooray, 100th post in this thread.

A real mystery Bev. Definitely intriguing. I know how absurdly fast crabs can be, you might remember the time I tried to catch my Garfield crab and ended up with one of his legs. Tough little bastards.

Overall, how many snails did you find dead in the graveyard, and how many snails do you still have?

[Beverly]

Quinn,

Don't know how many snails I had to begin with, so I don't know exactly how many are left. But there are lots left, though, and too hard to count, you know

As for the dead ones, I stopped counting None died last night, if I don't count the hitchhiker that I didn't know was there. Don't know how many hitchhikers have gone missing because these guys are so small and I think they only come out at night.

I checked out my 37g and 67g earlier today. 37g has only margaritas and none have died. 67g has margaritas and ceriths. Ceriths were left over from when we had tanks with sandbeds. Two of them died shortly after changing tanks, but none have died since. No margaritas have died in the 67g, either.

Yup, it's a mystery all right. Gonna keep investigating. Lucky I found that crab eating that poor little snail last night. Gives me another direction to follow up on.

[Beverly]

Originally Posted by wayner

I was told to pour carbonated water over the hole where it lived & it would probably leave the rock.

Getting desparate and am considering using the carbonated water method on ALL the rock in the 120g Have seen several crabs over the past few nights, one of which I would like to transfer to another tank to eat algae. Have yet to find the source of the clicking as it moves to different locations in the tank.

Anyway, I have a few questions about using carbonated water before I attempt this massive undertaking:

- If I soak individual rocks in a pail of carbonated water and remove the animals that come out and place them right away in SW, will these animals survive?

- After a 2-4 minute saok, how much of the live stuff on my rock will still be alive, such as macroalgae, coraline algae, bacteria? Will I be killing the rock by soaking it in carbonated water?

- Some of my rock has mushrooms and star polyps on it. Will the carbonated water kill them?

- What else should I know about the effects that carbonated water will have on my rock and animals?

Thanks in advance for any comments, suggestions, similar experiences

[Aquattro]

Bev, I would only do this with a rock you knew something was in. Not just hit them all until you find something. soda water is not good for anything on the rock. Besides the osmotic difference, you have a huge pH difference as well.

[Bob I]

What Brad said , but in addition you would more than likely end up with a whole bunch of DEAD rock.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Bob_I

...but in addition you would more than likely end up with a whole bunch of DEAD rock.

Yup, that's what I was leading to....

[Beverly]

Originally Posted by reef_raf

Bev, I would only do this with a rock you knew something was in. Not just hit them all until you find something. soda water is not good for anything on the rock. Besides the osmotic difference, you have a huge pH difference as well.

Brad and boB,

The problem is that I have no idea which rocks harbour the bad guy(s). Would using RO/DI or very dilute SW water, say with a salinity of .300 instead of the regular 1.026, instead of soda water be less harmful to the rock overall, but still flush out the crabs and the thing doing all the clicking?

I don't necessarily want to kill the crabs, because I know that at least two of them are beautiful and harmless filter feeders and another is an algae eater. But I would like to find the other crabs and clicking thing, and do as little harm to the rock as possible.

Any other ideas than those I have suggested?

[Samw]

Try taking 1-3 rocks out at a time. Remove the rock(s) and put them in a bucket of tank water. Then listen for the clicks in the tank over the night. If no more clicks then you've got the rock(s) you want. If you still have clicks, remove another group of rocks.

Though you may find the animal that is clicking, it may still not be the thing killing your snails. I'd still use a video recorder if you have one.

[Cap'n]

How about setting up a QT tank and removing those rocks you think harbour the bad guy? Keep baiting both tanks and see what happens. I also recommend using something more tasty than already dead snails for bait. I think you should go back to trying to trap the sucker!

[Bob I]

Beverley, I have sitting on my shelf doing nothing, a Ultralife X-terminator Mantis Shrimp trap. I bought it some time ago from MOPS. I would be more than happy to send it to you.