Dead clam

[gemmate]

Water parms are fine. Other corals and fish doing greate. Didn't notice any difference but one day I came home and found clam dead. How long do they live? What could be a reason?

[Vincenzo.]

they live for hundreds of years.

there are so many reasons.

[Hookup]

How old to your tank?

Did you ever have it out of water?

Did you burp it?

[gemmate]

How old to your tank?

Did you ever have it out of water?

Did you burp it?

Tank is about 10 month old. Still learning.
Never have it from the water. It actually was doing pretty well as far as I could say.
What do you mean by saying "burp it"?
I do not feed corals directly though, have no access to the surface due bad canopy construction. I just put some coral plankton food in the water and pumps spread it all over the tank and I think corals get it in this way.
I also recently lost cleaner shrimp, Red Flame Scallops (they do live up to 8 month), and sifting starfish kind of in bad shape.
I will do more test for water parms as I just purchased more tests.

[RossW]

With the recent deaths I wonder about an ammonia/nitrite/nitrate spikes.

Depending on the what type of clam it is they require HIGH light.

[gemmate]

With the recent deaths I wonder about an ammonia/nitrite/nitrate spikes.

Depending on the what type of clam it is they require HIGH light.

I have no time to measure water parms every day.
Cleaner shrimp just disappeared one day.
red scallop was small and I do not think it could affect overall 120 gallon system with ammonia spike but I can be wrong.
I've got clam from Ray few month ago. I really didn't ask for the name but it was nice blue clam. Regarding the light I have old setup 2x175W 5K MH every day for 9 hours. 2x40W actnics currently are not working.

[RossW]

I am guessing it was one of the following:
http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=497+529+1650&pcatid=1650
http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=497+529+586&pcatid=586

and not:
http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=497+529+585&pcatid=585

How far from the top of the tank was it?

Light is sounding like the most likely culprit at this point, unless you had it 2" from the top of the tank.

[Vincenzo.]

red flame scallops have like a 1% survival rate in our tanks. they are not a critter to keep, although they are super nice.

[dan2x38]

My vote is the lighting like Ross suggested. That tank is also 24" add the light height from the water surface if it wasn't close to your light source could be starving. If you just a baseline wpg at 375w/120g it is less than 3 wpg then adjust for depth and height. Plus if the bulbs are getting older they loss spectrum and MH can drop off quickly especially as they age - after 9 months.

[Hookup]

Burping a clam is important as a safety precaution.

Clams can get air trapped in side.. So a summersault and tumble, under water can dislodge the air.

This is called burping, to me anyhow...

Important to do whe. You get the clam home... As threes no sure way to know if air is inside from the LFS or even the bagging process or ride home.

An air bubble can kill a clam suddenly, as if without cause.  One day it looks good, the next it's crabmeat.  This happens within a few days.  If it was in your system for a week, I'd think it was something else.

[gemmate]

Just to clarify that I had the clam for few months and it was just fine and looked healthy. It was on the bottom of the aquarium right under MH light and it seemed Ok. Today I lost another Coral Angel fish:( Feel like I want to go back to freshwater, reef is too expensive for me.

[Bob P]

Puzzling, my clam is on the bottom of my 75
under t5's for over a year now, growing well.
And flame scallop is two years in the tank.
Pinpointing the problem is near impossible sometimes.

[Vincenzo.]

^wow very good you have it for 2yrs now. very impressive. doing anything special for it?

just goes to show how crazy reef are. one thing works in one persons tanks, and the same thing dont work in another.

but Dimitri, it migt be like Ross or Hookup pointed out too. one thing though, dont give up... its very expensive hobby, but once your parameters are stable for a long time, it basically watches over itself.. minus the regular work.

[Hookup]

Just to clarify that I had the clam for few months and it was just fine and looked healthy. It was on the bottom of the aquarium right under MH light and it seemed Ok. Today I lost another Coral Angel fish:( Feel like I want to go back to freshwater, reef is too expensive for me.

This is obviously not normal.

There is a root cause here.

A few months = not air imo.

time for posting up some basics like test-kit brands and paramaters.

Also what about maintenance, water source, how often do you change, salt brands... etc... etc...

there likely will not be a clear and simple answer here, but there's def an issue.

[dan2x38]

Yeah for sure not the norm... Have you changed something like the salt? Change amount of water changed? Staying on top of top offs? Did you start any supplementing or stop any? Sure of temp. and SG? In other words what has changed?

[johnrt]

Did your tank get 'cooked' in the last heat-wave?

[Bob P]

Slightly off topic for a second.
Vince, nothing special that I know of.
Nicely established tank, feed frozen rotifer
cubes once a week, and a splash of live phyto
on water change day.

[SeahorseGuyetGal]

Tank is about 10 month old. Still learning.
Never have it from the water. It actually was doing pretty well as far as I could say.
What do you mean by saying "burp it"?
I do not feed corals directly though, have no access to the surface due bad canopy construction. I just put some coral plankton food in the water and pumps spread it all over the tank and I think corals get it in this way.
I also recently lost cleaner shrimp, Red Flame Scallops (they do live up to 8 month), and sifting starfish kind of in bad shape.
I will do more test for water parms as I just purchased more tests.

Do you have any other clams?  What the other persons are saying (air, lighting, water conditions etc...) would most certainly the first things I would look into.

However, it may be that the clam you got was infested with a parasite (Perkinsus olseni) that causes pinched mantle disease in Maximas and Croacia (the purply blue clam).  It can take time for it to kill the clam. FYI the treatment is described as a freshwater bath.  You can find an informative article using the following link:

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/ca/volume_6/volume_6_4/clams.html