What happened to our clam?

[doublette]

Literally overnight our crocea clam went from a thriving beautiful clam to this.
http://www3.telus.net/public/dabbler/clam.jpg
On Monday night the clam looked really good, no signs of anything being wrong. Came home Tuesday and saw this. Came home Wednesday and it was nothing more than the shell. It had been in our tank since the beginning of January. There has been no change in our water parameters, the first thing I did was check the water. No other corals are near by. Tank inhabitants include a powder blue tang, two false percs, a cleaner goby, a cleaner shrimp, a two-spot goby, a mandarin, 1 sea hare, various snails, and some scarlet and blue leg hermits. A water change of 20G was done the previous saturday. Everything else in the tank looks and is acting fine. I'm stumped as to what happened. Any ideas?

[johnny rock]

don't know, same happened to me last week. 3 new clams, 2 dissolved over night. how small were they? mine were about 2'' to 2.5''

[vanreefer]

I had a similar thing happen to my prize T. deresa overnight went from clam extra-ordinaire to crab food... :frown: I have heard that some of the critters that live in the sand bed can bite/sting the clam from below... but yours isn't on the sand so :question:
hope somebody has more insight than my "critter theory" :rolleyes:

[michika]

Wow!

I'm sorry about your clam!

Unfortunatly I have no insightes either as to what caused it's death!

[doublette]

Thanks. At least I know we're not the only ones!

The clam was about 3" maybe 3.5". When we first got it we placed it on the sand but it kept blowing itself around in circles so we moved to the rocks after about 3 weeks of watching it do the hokey-pokey... :rolleyes:

[michika]

Have you tried the Clams Direct forum? Since clams are their specialty you might get more information from them!

[EmilyB]

Did the clam attach up there on the rocks? How much flow did you have for the clam to be blown around or was it just moving?

Edit: reread sounds like it was moving. Was there anything for it to attach to in the sandbed, rubble or anything?

[doublette]

EmilyB: The clam did attach itself to the rock once it was moved off the sand. Although it didn't seem to have a very strong hold as I had found it back on the sand bed one time. When it was on the sand bed there was nothing for it to attach to. At the time we were told it that would be okay. It was pretty cool watching how it would turn itself around. It looked like it was sucking in a whole bunch of water, then it would almost completely close itself up. Then all of a sudden it would shoot the water out causing it to do almost a 90 degree spin. I took it as a sign it wasn't happy and that was when we moved it to the rock.

[EmilyB]

Those croceas seem to really like jumping off the rock. What kind of light do you have btw ?

Out of four, I have one that attached and stayed on the rock. So I just left them alone. They ended up attaching to bits and pieces of rubble in the sand. The hazard with them jumping is they can injure themselves on coral.

I DO have a turbo that has developed a taste for clam, believe it or not. I had a hippopus clam that seemed to always have hair algae on it, so I introduced a few turbos. There was one that stayed with that clam long after the hair algae was gone and I thought nothing of it. One AM the clam was completely empty and the turbo was inside. I thought nothing of it (and I'm sure he had some help cleaning up the remains) but I wondered why out of eight clams that one had died?

The next night I caught that turbo on another clam and just to be on the safe side, took him out and threw him in the back tank.

Weeks later, having forgotten the incident, I moved him back to the main tank with some other astreas etc from the back. Within minutes he was on a clam shell. :eek: Seemed bizarre to me, but he can't go back in that tank anymore just in case. The other turbos are fine and have never caused a problem.

If something was aggravating the clam at all, they may have just succumbed to the addictive taste of clam slime.

[doublette]

What kind of light do you have btw ?
Sorry I should have said that earlier, this tank has 2 - 250Watt 14,000K halides and 110 watts of 10,000K Compact Fluorescent. The tank is a 120 gallon with a 72 gallon sump/refugium.