astrea snails died after 4 days!! why??

hey guys.
i have a question about astrea snails.
i bought one the other and for the first day he didnt move much. just sucked onto the wall and sat there. eventually he started moving all over the place and it was amazing how fast he was.
however after about 3 -4 days he was dead. i noticed he hadnt moved from one spot in a while so i picked him up and he was gone.

i bought another one which did even worse. he didnt attach himself at all to any part of the tank and just died.

i acclimatised them over an hour adding about 1/4 cup of tank water every 15mins. was that enough time????
my params are all fine nitrate, ammonia wise.

i did use cupramine some time ago (which i would never use again as i now know how lethal it can be) however i have run lots of carbon through my filter since and the test kit shows 0.00ppm copper.

any idea on why they died?? there was algae on the walls for them to eat too.

thanks

 

I would test for copper just in case.
Snails are tough to figure out. PH and Temp swings can cause problems.
Some snails being sold as astera snail can actually be colder water snails

 

how old is the tank

 

copper can get absorbed into the silicon seals and can be very tough to get rid off. you could try cuprisorb to suck some of it up.

 

you would need pretty high levels of copper to kill the snails that quickly.

were they, are they, healthy critters to start with?

what is your water temps vrs. the lfs water temps?

as with star fish, and nearly all inverts, water temps are critical, thus acclimation from more/less then one degree can quickly mean death if equalization time is not granted- over the tears (years) I have found this to be esp. true with shrimp.

many lfs run "cold" tanks to save on energy costs.

BTW, carbon will not remove copper.