cleaning crew death
 

Hi everyone, I have a bio cube 29 cycled for about 2 months with live rock and live sand first crew introduced yesterday and they all seem to have expired. Ph is 8.3 salinity is within the hydro meters norm. Checked nitrates and nitrites and are all showing 0 or near 0. What could have happened?

Have you checked the ammonia level?

If they have ALL died that fast it would likely have to be ammonia or some other poison floating around. Do you have carbon running? What's your ammonia at?

The other likely possibilty... ACCLIMATION! How did you go about acclimating them? What did you add for CUC?

+1

Mitch

Test for copper

Hydrometer are horrible and rarely show the real salinity. YOu need to buy a good refractometer. Those on ebay with ATC (auto temperature compensation) are cheap and good.

I suspect either your salinity or water quality is way off or your acclimatation was too drastic.

Salinity is looking good and ammonia is okay... I will put some carbon in tomorrow see if that helps. I also changed out some water ... I will re-test tomorrow. I don't have a copper test.. will have to find one.

You didn't mention how you acclimated them...

If the tank is new, and you haven't used copper, then that is likely not it.

What animals did you add?

floated the bags for 20-30 minutes and then let them go... didnt think that I needed to acclimatize for cleaning crew.

Ya, they (depending on type of animal) can be really sensitive to salinity changes, etc. It's recommended that you drip tank water into holding water to equalize parameters. Although, I wouldn't expect everything to die. I have just dumped 50 snails into my tank (long bus ride caused water to foul) and out of 50, I lost a couple.

Which was near zero? The nitrites should be zero.

To properly acclimate them you need to drip water into there bag or bucket for at least an hour with a drip rate of about 1 drop every 2 seconds or so. I just grabbed some airline tubing and a valve to build my acclamator. If I was doing it again I would find a U shaped ridgid peice to hang off the tank.

You are just unlucky to buy some nearly-dead snails from the LFS.

While that's possible, it's not proabable. The chances of all the critters being near death is unlikely.