Queen Conch Stopped Moving

[Jan]

Well, my queen conch like the title says, doesn't move around hardly at all anymroe. It used to be really active and go all over the tank. Every day or so I pick it up to see if it's still alive and amazingly, it is. It reacts and retracts anyway, then when I put it down it will poke its eye stalk out to look around. It's almost like it's hybernating or something.


Now, I have had a recent salinity problem (too low) because my refractometer wasn't calibrated correctly....but now the tank is back up to 1.022.

Any suggestions on what I can do to perk it up?

 

[Scooterman]

Yea, raise your salinity to sg 1.0265 or 35ppt, your too low!

 

[spongebob lover]

ouch .
i hope your conch gets better

 

[Jan]

Yea, raise your salinity to sg 1.0265 or 35ppt, your too low!

I know, but I've already raised it from 1.018 to 1.022 in a week's time and considering that Boomer says it's only safe to raise salinity by 1 unit every week, I didn't want to push my luck....

 

[sgwill122]

I had the same problem, my salt went down to the same range. I brought it up to 1.025 over three days without any problems. Not sure why you would need a week per point but I am no expert. I had lots of snail loss at the low salinity before bringing it up. All the new additions we add to our tanks get acclimated in hours not days.

 

[Snowboarda42]

Mine will do the same thing for a few days, usually it will just bury itself and hang out for a while under the sand before I see it again.

 

[Jan]

Mine will do the same thing for a few days, usually it will just bury itself and hang out for a while under the sand before I see it again.

well that's a relief. I was wondering.

 

[Scooterman]

I know, but I've already raised it from 1.018 to 1.022 in a week's time and considering that Boomer says it's only safe to raise salinity by 1 unit every week, I didn't want to push my luck....

Ahh yea, I thought that was where you were keeping it.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

How long have you had the conch? I mean... has it just started acting like this over a couple weeks, or are we talking months.

If months, and it's slowing down, it could be running out of food. Maybe. Not sure of the condition of your tank, but it could've just eaten itself out of house and home. Maybe try plopping it on top of a small piece of nori and see if it perks up? Just a thought.

 

[Jan]

Kurt, I think that's a good idea about the nori. It crossed my mind that it might be running out of food. It's been acting like this for only a couple of weeks, which coincidentally is about the same length of time that I've noticed how clean my rocks are looking (I mean squeeky clean). I added ~80 small blueleg hermits a couple of months ago and I'm finally noticing that they've eaten up almost all of my algae except for valonia and a bit of bryopsis. Of course the salinity drop happened during the past two weeks also, but it's worth a try to get it eating again.