Unhappy clam

Good job in your follow through to hopefully solve a problem. Excellent. K+ to you.

 

Be careful. Trading up to high intensity lighting can also shock your clam. You can cause damage just by moving your clam to strong lighting from weak ones.

Btw, have you checked for parasitic snails? Is the clam attached to your rock? where was the clam positioned in the aquarium relevant to the lighting and to strong water movment(was it near heavy waterflow?)

 

I had the MH lights on for ~4 hours today, with the timer set for 4 hours tomorrow. I'll step up an hour each day after that until 8, with actinic PC's on a half hour before and after.

The clam was attached to a rock until this morning, in a moderate flow area- not directly inline with any flow but close to the return from the skimmer. It was about 8" down from the PC's I had until today. I haven't seen any evidence of snails, and the clam has been in the LFS for at least a month doing well. I suspect that although it was under T5's hung 18" up at the LFS, the nearby MH lights on the next tank over were leaking light to it.

At this point it's still looking really, really bad. The shell is still 1/2" open, and I can see the gills and siphon slowly pulsing at an irregular rate.

 

it seems like a sudden issue but the fact is a clam will go down for a long time without notice. This is why a clam can look great one day and the next look like crap. Most of the time(not all) when a clam is noticably sick, there's not much of a chance. IMO I think your problem was the lighting. It didn't have enough at the lfs, and not enough in your tank. Just my opinion tho. BTW have you used any liquid phosphate removers. These will kill a clam in a heartbeat.

 

No chemicals of any kind recently. Red slime remover last month, a few weeks before the clam was introduced and three water changes in between.

It is looking slightly better today under the halides, but I realize it'll be a close one.

 

I've no experience with clams, so take this with a grain of salt.

You claim your clam is about a month old. If your lights were the culprit, it's hard for me to imagine the issue would crop up so suddenly. I could understand if it was a problem with a variable that could cause a sustained decrease in some important parameter/quality. Say your protein skimmer pump failed. In 3 days you'd see a bad scenario. Or, if for example, if a power head stopped working and you somehow didn't notice; this could precipitate a sudden and drastic change in the health of an animal dependent upon water movement.

If it were the lighting, why so sudden a decline in the animal's health? Again, I have no experience with clams, but I can't imagine if your lighting was insufficient--that the clam would thrive for 4 weeks, only to nearly die one day.

I'm going to take a guess here and assume the clam might have died of natural causes. If it were the lighting, perhaps now that you've replaced your PCs with MHs it will solve the problem.

Good luck!!

 

Hey RS. Clams can take several months to die but it may not become apparant that they're sick or dying until it's already too late.

 

OK then. Thanks, Amcarrig. That's why there's no substitute for experience!!

 

FWIW, I too am no clam expert, but am sometimes concerned about people and the statements about amount of light needed.
For years, I have kept my crocea clams and my squamosa clam under NO lighting. I had been in the hobby about 8 or 9 years when my LFS suggested I try one as I had been keeping my Sebae anemone for all those years and had no problems.
At the time, I purchased a crocea and placed it in one of my 90's under 8 NO 40 w lamps with staggerd light "on" times. After a while, having no problems, I bought another crocea and a squamosa and placed them in the same tank.
I've had them now for over 5 years except for one crocea that I lost about a year ago when my tank sprung a leak and I had to switch everything over to a 65g that I was going to get rid of. One crocea tore off the rock when I was removing it and died a few days later.
The two remaining clams and the sebae anemone have been in that 65 ever since, with just 6 40 w NO's over top and the hood is 11 inches over the waters surface, far less light even than the previous tank had.
Hopefully once I retire, I'll find time to repair the 90g tank and return everything to it.
In the case of your clam, I would be looking for a problem other than lighting.

 

Well first off no clam would ever enter my tank unless its been F/R dipped first to rid it of all the internal pest from worms to pyramid snails and to date after dipping hundreds if not thousands of clams I have never not had one to expel plenty of snails and or worms . I got some from a well known Clam site thats about all they did then I guess they may be still around ? But the clams where loaded with pyramid snails I got 200 + from just one 4 inch Maxima .

So your clam I'd be will to bet is loaded with some pest , But also I have kept them under VHO and NO T 12 and they did very well With very long photo periods , And I have tried them under P/C's not so good the P/C just never offered the proper or stable lighting values needed by them , That may be different now since UVL started to produce a line of P/C bulbs . Never used them myself .

Clams can start to die with in a few hrs of hitting your tank and then it can take a long long time to totally fade away . If it where my clam I'd dip it then look for more lighting or get proper bulbs how much actinic re you running and what bulbs are you using ? I hope its not Coralife Daylight bulbs .. I have yet to ever see old P/C's to maintian clams for long..