Crabs, snails and inverts oh my!

[cent36]

What constitutes inverts? This may be a dumb question, but just wondering if there are things in that family that I'm not aware of?

Secondly, what do I need to be on the look out for (ie. water params, etc) when it comes to keeping them?

Reason I ask these questions is to learn more, BUT I had a red legged hermit crab just up and die on me and his body is floating around my tank out of the shell....not that any of that matters....and I don't really see the other four crabs, but they could be hiding somewhere. He was the biggest of the five so maybe just old age.......anywho.....I digress

 

[rplank]

Inverts don't have an internal skeleton. Hermits molt and the molt is sometimes mistaken for a dead un. Keep an eye out for a few days and you may see your big guy in a different shell.
Copper is the kryptonite of inverts. Many snails do not like temps above the mid 70's.

 

[FishTV]

Your floating crab is more than likely a molt. Crabs, and other inverts have no internal skeleton, they rely on a number of defenses such as exoskeleton's, shells, or some other defense, like a powerful sting or even being poisonous to things that would harm, or eat them. Crabs for example must molt the exoskeleton in order to grow.

 

[cent36]

so my crab, left his shell on top of the tallest rock, then climbed down and molted and then picked up a new shell?

 

[cent36]

if I retrieve said molt, how do I know if it's a molt or the body?

 

[rplank]

No guts.....but if it's been a while, your clean up crew would have eaten the soft parts anyways. If it is floating around the tank there is nothing inside most likely. If there were guts to be eaten it would probably be on the bottom swarmed by critters, depending on how new your tank is. Give it a few days and count heads is the only way to know for sure.

 

[SkyShark]

This is a great book with tons of pictures. You won't believe some of the inverts out there.
Invertebrates: a Quick Reference Guide
Julian Sprung.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1883693004?pc_redir=1405230621&robot_redir=1

 

[cent36]

Good info and thanks for the book reference....
What about the params? what do I need to keep in check? anything other than the typical ph,nitrate, nitrite, ammonia?

 

[cent36]

So I bought a copper test kit and it red zero, I now only have one hermit (out of five) left that I can see, but my snails are still going strong. I have been monitoring my parameters and my ammonia is at zero as well.

Anything else I should be looking at?

 

[SynDen]

Well if its not copper, and not ammonia. The only other things that I can think that would cause all the crabs to suddenly die would be a drastic swing in salinity and or alk, or you inadvertently introduced some other toxin to the water that we don't test for (like some cleaning chemical or something.
What is you salinity at and how have you been testing it? Has it changed at all recently?
How about alk?

Of course crabs do die off from time to time as well, and they have to be restocked every so often, but a bit suspicious that they all died off at about the same time.

 

[cent36]

So I was able to see two crabs still rollin around in there (out of five). I check my salinity with a refractometer. It is currently at 1.024 and no, it hasn't changed.

I haven't used any cleaners around the tank....ever.....could a moth in the tank do it? I haven't seen one specifically but they do get in some of the craziest places.

I haven't tested alk.

BTW, good meeting you Sat night SYN

 

[SynDen]

Well that's good if you still have 2 of them. I would get the alk tested though. That's one of your more important numbers to keep track of overall, so you should be tracking that one and trying to ensure it stays fairly stable. Ca and Mag will also grow in importance as you start to stock with more things.

Another thing that could cause some of the crabs to suddenly die would be a temp swing. If the tank suddenly jumped in temp, that could cause enough stress to kill off some of the crabs. So keep an eye on that too. I know when I first setup my tank, I set it up in Feb so it was pretty easy to maintain the temp, but when summer came my house temp one day went from 70 degrees to 80 degree in a very short period of time. This in turn made my tank also jump 10-12 degrees in less then a day and caused some of my CuC to die off. It also caused my GSP to lose its color and go brown. It took another year before it finally got its bright green coloration back.
I now keep several clip fans on the sump to increase evap cooling and I also added more fans to my canopy to keep the light heat off the tank. That has made a drastic improvement and this year my temp has remained rock solid

And yes it was great to meet you too. Keep pluggin away at the tank and it will all fall into place eventually. CuC do tend to die off from time to time and need to be replaced fairly regularly so I wouldn't fret to much about it. The first year of a tank is fairly rough and there is tons to learn in that year, but over time it will improve and you will be able to enjoy it more.

 

[cent36]

So I set my tank up in april and as soon as the summer rolled around my temps started to swing wildly (but that was before the CuC) I got a rock solid heater AND a clip on fan on my sump and now it doesn't fluctuate any more than 1.5 degrees in a day. Up at 80.5 during the day and down to 79.2 at night.

Thanks for the info...i'll keep an eye on things and will get a few more hermits and an alk test kit.