# I feel so stupid



## danilykins (Dec 22, 2010)

Ok, so I have had my tank up and running for a couple of days now. I have activflora as a substrate in the tank. I put some fish in with my snail and shrimp. My snail has been holed up in the treasure chest all day. So i check to see if he is ok. Well he was just laying in there, so Im like uh oh, this isn't good, so I took him out and checked him out.. he was up in his shell. so I was like WTF this is the second snail in a month... I put him back in the tank, he came out of his shell, I was like YEAH he's not dead... but he was acting weird.. so I got an idea, the substrate I have in there was sticking to him. So I checked the ingredients to that.. It has both copper and sodium in it!!!!! So I took him out and put him in the 10gallon, and Im praying that I didn't kill him. But needless to say, his home will now be in the other tank *sigh*


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

API sells a copper test kit for your water. I don't know too much about shrimp, but believe they don't like copper either.


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## PolymerTim (Sep 22, 2009)

Wow, that's a bummer. I hope you get things worked out.

One tip I ran across for snails is that if they are shut up tight they are not dead. They have to exert a force to remain completely closed. When they die, the operculum (trap door) is typically in kind of a half-open / half-closed state. Then being mostly water, they start to decompose very rapidly, so it will be pretty obvious in 12-24 hours.


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## danilykins (Dec 22, 2010)

Yeah he is fine, he is in the other tank at the moment and sucked onto the glass. I emailed the company of ActivFlora to see if they had any suggestions for the set up. I'd hate to have to pull everything out and start over with a different gravel set up, because this one looks so nice.


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## James0816 (Jun 19, 2009)

Usually those substrates are just trace and shouldn't be enough to harm inverts. But as mentioned, if in doubt, get a test kit to be sure. It's always worth having that extra bit of security.

And if you suspect him passing ... do the sniff test. You'll know for sure. ;oP


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