There have been murders in my tank!
 

Is there a reason why snails do this? I'm pretty sure it has left it's shell since I can't see the bottom of anything like you normally can. Shell looks sparkling clean.

I don't have anything that would do that in the tank. I have two clownfish that have been with the snails for a while now. I added an arrow crab and a kole tang yesterday, but I don't believe that they would have eaten a snail.

Any ideas?

snails cannot leave their shells, so it must have died and the crab or some other critter (bristle worms etc) cleaned it out.

how bout hermits do you have any of those?

quite possibly it just died tho do you know what kind of snail it was?

http://www.reefhotspot.com/store/ima...Neseriidae.jpg

if it was one of these cerith snails it is quite typical for them to die I bought lots and over time all died.

Yep ...

Just a wild guess though..

The arrow crab is pretty small and figured he wouldn't have done anything since he is so new to the tank.

The snail was a turbo, pretty big too.

No hermits in the tank, didn't want them fighting over each other.

hmm turbos are generally super hardy, I have 3 and for awhile thought they were gonners as I never saw them for 2 months until recently, they must have been doing well cause I got about 15 baby turbos in my sump, did it get hungry maybe run out of food?

Possibly, I always clean up the tank, so maybe I gotta do that less often. So much for keeping the glass clean. The sand is also pretty clean, they do a good job at keeping it together.

Ok, it's not a matter of the tank being clean or not.

I came into work today and the lights were off. I noticed another snail, upside down looking dead.

I turned on the lights after saying "what the f....??". Something darted off in a direction, way too quick for me to notice what it was. I'm thinking some sort of worm??

If anyone has any suggestions, let me know. I need to figure out what the hell is killing my snails.

its the arrow crab

maybe a mantis

The arrow crab was far away from the snail when I turned on the light. It's not the arrow crab. Arrow crabs are scavengers and I had fed him the night before.

There was something on the snail, I just don't know what it was. It was too fast.

I am guessing that you have another crab in there that you didnt know you had. Try and get a good look at it. Be prepared before you turn on the lights

Any way for me to setup a trap or anything? I could round up my snails overnight in a plastic container and setup some food for it.

Yeah you can try and trap it using a bottle and bait.

When I moved my crabs + snails from the old tank to the new one I caught most of them by hand but I wasn't sure if a few stragglers were left hiding in the sand, so I set up a little tupperware in the tank, covered in bridal veil with a little slit in it so if they were persistant enough they copuld get in, baited it with frozen fish food and waited till the next morning. 4 crabs and 2 snails!

What do you guys use as bait?

Just a chunk of frozen fish food, weighted down with a little bit of rubble.

Arrow crabs are NOT scavengers. you may get told that but in my experiences they like to try and catch fish and will prey on most anything that is slow and cant defend itself.

Guess a girls gotta do SOMETHING with the old bridal veil.....:lol:


I would think it most likely that your arrow crab did the killing and then whatever you saw dart away when you clicked on the lights was the actual scavenger...
Just my best guess.

This sucks. I'm gonna try trading him for some shrimp or a red sea star. If anyone is interested, let me know.

Have you considered just purchasing more snails?

that actually made me lol, not sure why, maybe I am a sadist!!?

I didn't buy the arrow crab to kill my snails, I thought that he would be a good addition and take care of the tank and get along with everyone else.

I really like arrow crabs, they are very interesting creatures. But I don't want to have to deal with snails dying every other few days and me having to spend 30 bucks a month on feeding the crab w/ snails. The weird part was that the snail didn't look chewed, or anything, it just had a ton of slime on it.

Hopefully I'll get something that works with the tank a bit better.