Orange turbo snail spawning!

[ripped tide]

This morning, after I fed and dosed my tank, I noticed a few of my acros sending out the white streams of mucus like they will do if stressed or sometimes during feeding. I kind of noticed that tank water was starting to cloud up and my first thought was that I must have gotten something in the water on accident, and a few of my fish went into hiding. But I began to notice that the fish that werent in hiding seemed to be hanging around this one big orange turbo snail. He(I now am certain is a male) was periodically spraying a milky substance into the water and the fish were eating it! I then started looking at my other 4 orange turbo snails. One of the other was spraying the milky substance(sperm) and the other three were releasing eggs. It was a pretty interesting event, but the tank got really cloudy, 45 mins later eggs were all over. Has this ever happened for any one else? Is there a good survival rate? Will this mess up my water quality? Thanks!

 

[jennm]

We have seen it happen. Once it happened right after we'd acclimated about 150 snails and they all had the same idea at the same time. Not cool for our invert system Nowadays we acclimate them into a bucket, wait a while then move them to the system.

Just a few doing it probably won't affect your water quality (150 is another story!)

It's unlikely that anything will result from it through, offspring-wise.

The only snails I've seen proliferate are Stomatellas and Ceriths.

Jenn

 

[bruce 1]

I have some fighting conchs that have babies and have made it. (I posted a photo of them last week) I have 100s of babies right now. The other batches only 30 or so made it and are now the size of a pencil eraser.

 

[ripped tide]

News update. Not the best. I came home from tonights meeting(very cool meeting btw) to find most of the sps that were stressed during the spawning to have browned out a bit and my foxface was dead. My skimmer had been going crazy. I tested everything that I had a test for:

Ph: 8.2
No3: 0ppm
Po4: 0ppm
Total alk 4.0meg/l
Ca: 420ppm
Mg: 1375

These are not un common parameters for this tank. The only other possibility is related to temp. All summer the a/c has been on and the heater constantly ran to maintain at 78.5-79 degrees. With the cooler weather, the a/cs are off and the windows are open. When I checked the temp this evening, it was at 81.5 degrees. I wouldn't assume that small of a swing could create this much of a change.

Could this be weather related and have something to do with the pressure change?

Any enlightenment?

 

[jennm]

I doubt that a couple of snails releasing their gametes would kill anything.

81.5 is warm but not fatal either.

Any other changes to the tank recently?

Jenn

 

[ripped tide]

Not that I can think of off hand. This morning things looked better. The two things that really browned out were my purple cap and Hawkins blue. The purple cap had gotten some color back but the hawkins is still on the fence. Other than that 20+ sps are still ok. A few may not be as bright as they were two days ago, but still have great polyp extension and one that had some burnt tips actually healed up.

It's odd. One fish stresses and dies, the others have a feeding frenzy and seem happier than ever. Some corals look worse, some are doing better than ever.

The only changing factor over the last few weeks is calcium intake. Seems like I can't put enough in the tank. I would like it to be around 460-480 but can't get it above 420.