Hermit eating dead Turbo Snail at night, caught on camera

There was one turbo snail that looked dead.

It had been upside down for two days, I turned him right side up on a rock covered with brown algae, it didn't move for a few hours, I took it out of the water to smell it, but it didn't seem dead, so I put it back on the rock.

Didn't move for hours, and now as I arrive home from a wedding party I found one of my large Hermit Crabs eating it. Caught him on camera.... ugly shot because it was a night shot with a video camera, but you can see what was going on....

Here is another view of it:

Second dead critter

Today I found the second dead animal in my tank.  The first was a hermit crab I found dead on 18-Aug. Today I found another one dead. Smallone, outside of his shell, dead lying on the floor.  Maybe another smaller hermit killed him to take over his shell.  Will never know....

Here is the first one, being eaten:

Water measurements

The tank started on 12-Aug, and from then to now these are my water testing results. The water came straight from a large tank at SolarReefs, so no long cycle was expected.

Date  ,  pH,  Alk, NH3(ppm), NO2(ppm), NO3(ppm)

14-Aug, 8.0, ~2.0,        0,  no test, no test

20-Aug, 8.0,  1.7,        0,     0.05,      20

25-Aug, 8.0, ~1.8,     0.05,        0,      20

This is my tank

This is my tank, a 180 liter square tank, visible from all sides, with a central column for sump communication.

The sand bed is crushed coral, about 10 cm deep, the rocks are artificially made from crushed coral and will become live rocks as time pass by. They were in contact with salt water for 3 months before coming to my tank, so bacterially they were already live. No critters though.

Inside the cabinet is a 42 liter sump inside which there's an Escuma 800 protein skimmer, a bubble trap , a thermostat heater hooked on a digital thermometer control (just in case) and two 1800 liter per hour return pumps. (two, just in case). Sump also has an auto-top off with two level sensor linked serially, just in case (if one fails, or locks up the other stops the ATO pump flow). One of the return pumps will be connected to a UPS (no-break), just in case.

Lighting is 8x 20W 50/50 mini-compacts from Coralife.  Six of them turn on from 10:00 to 22:00 and the 2 remaining from 11:00 to 23:00.  I start it up right with the 6 because a lot of ambient light is present in the room it sits from 7:00 onwards.

Temperature cooling is done with two fans in the hood, which will turn on blowing wind on the water surface if the temperature reaches 27.5 C.

Bought it from SolarReefs, a LFS in São Paulo.

Right now, there are only about 15 turbo snails and 15 hermit crabs, the cleaning crew.  Hopefully soon we'll put the first coral in there....