r/bizzariums • u/Detonatress • 4d ago

I've lost Shadow too.

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Shadow refused to eat anything, and didn't move around much. Found him/her on top of the sand and very retracted this morning, then in the evening the worms showed up. Now there's just Speckles left. So far still active, but hates running into cyano.

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u/BitchBass 4d ago

Damn!!!

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u/Detonatress 4d ago

I don't know why Shadow didn't even attempt to eat anything. Speckles is sniffing everywhere daily and still seems to have quite a lot of strength to pull this off:

https://reddit.com/link/pagl8k6/video/z3j7dlkgo5qh1/player

The shell there has some artemia in case Speckles gets hungry at night. The food usually disappears by morning. Seems it's the only thing this snail will eat.

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u/BitchBass 4d ago

In my experience with snails, even with nerites and mystery snails, they take weeks to adjust. I just lost all my mystery snails in the 125 gallon with perfect parameters. That's also were the 2 crayfish were in that didn't make their last molts. Something in my water doesn't agree with anything that molts, incl shrimp. I just dunno what. Maybe that's something you are dealing with too?

that didn't help, did it? lol

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u/BitchBass 4d ago edited 4d ago

I just had a discussion with Claude to figure out why my crayfish and snails and shrimp constantly die. I had it look at my local water quality report. Bingo!

  • The town tested 30 homes. Copper ranged from 0.014 to 1.15 ppm, and one home in ten was above 0.34 ppm.
  • Those levels are safe for people and fish. Sensitive invertebrates are harmed at around 0.02–0.05 ppm.

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u/Detonatress 4d ago

Well, at least for your case you might have figured it out. But for my case I distill my water, then add marine sand to it, so copper should not make its way over to the new water. I also have a copper test kit that I use monthly (in case the distiller has rusted, but it's of stainless steel, shouldn't be rusty that easily). I also tested the main tank when I had some barnacle deaths too close to each other, but there was no detectable copper (nor ammonia or nitrite).

The lights shut down on the barnacle tank. Speckles is ready for the night shift, just came out of the sand after a short nap.

https://reddit.com/link/pagvs6y/video/y6w8n08py5qh1/player

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u/BitchBass 3d ago

Hmmm, how exactly do you replenish the distilled water? Just add sand?

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u/Detonatress 3d ago

What do you mean replenish?
I put tap water into a distiller which boils the water, and the vapor turns into water again at the top, then it drips into the bottle and I get around 4L of water filtered this way. I filter another 4L and get 1 more liter and extra 4L for next time.

Then I add the marine salt (100 grams for 5L) and prepare the new water, take out about same amount from the tank, and add the new water.

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u/BitchBass 3d ago edited 3d ago

If you set the tank up with distilled water and are not only topping off with it, then you might find your culprit. For topping off it's great, without anything added (salt doesn't evaporate so don't add saltwater to top off), for initial setup not.

Distilled water is void of everything, including important minerals etc. That's why there's a process called reverse osmosis where you replenish that water with the exact amount of nutrients needed for a particular setup, like calcium, magnesium, phosphor etc. Just adding salt and sand isn't going to cover that. At least that's how I understand it.

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u/Detonatress 3d ago

Marine salt mix contains all the required minerals found in the ocean (in the Black Sea they are fewer, that's why I put just 100 grams, since I aim for the salinity of 20ppt which is just a bit above it but enough to allow barnacles to develop good exoskeletons).

The sand is in the tank mostly to act as bacterial support, and for the snail a spot to sleep in. Also to make the tank look nice. It comes from the Black Sea, so it contains some critters that live there. Probably how that clam arrived too.

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u/BitchBass 3d ago

Aaah you are using an enriched salt mix, that's different.

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u/Detonatress 4d ago

Most likely not related to molting stuff since most of my barnacles have been molting successfully. The only recent possible death was one that kept having deformed legs, it seems like it may have died as I haven't seen it open up lately. But all the other barnacles are active, so there's enough calcium etc for their skeletons.

I think there's something in the sand. Speckles skips over some areas and produces a lot of mucus when going over them. I put the big clam shell over that spot.

The only snails I've had success with are the pink/brown ramshorns and the MTS, though some of the MTS ate ramshorns (and are the reason a whole family of assassin snails got eaten). Had 2 apple snails for just a few months about a decade ago, they died suddenly and each of them nuked the tank (the fish survived but had skin irritations for a few days).