clams and heat

[StirCrazy]

well I was thinking back the other day to the thread about all the clam deaths, I recall most people felt it was some sort of pathogen but a couple felt it was from heat. And even though there were tests done that confirmed a certain pathogen a few people would not believe it.

We I think my tank mishap goes to show how hardy some creatures are to heat spikes. My tank got up to 104.9 degrees F for an undisclosed amount of time. All my montipora is wiped out, my millipora is stresses but coming around, my acros are doing well, and my LPS and softies are pretending nothing happened.

All the fish are fine, no signs of stress, and my Clam is outstanding, like nothing ever happened. Now my tank this summer was regularly getting up to 88 degrees and cooling to 82 (on a daily basis) but 104.9 should have wiped the whole tank out in my opinion.

Steve

[Aquattro]

Steve, I agree. My tank routinely went from 80 to 89 daily and all my clams (and everything else) are fine.

[ldzielak]

My tank goes from 80 to 81 daily, maybe it's time I get a clam
:razz: :razz:

Lee

[Samw]

My 4 clams are still alive. 3 are doing well, 1 is in a breeding trap recovering from being eaten by bristleworms.

A few months back, I switched salts and I think this caused some zooxanthellae in the clams to die and make them smell dead to the bristleworms. Each day, the clams looked worse and worse and it looked like bits of their flesh were chewed from the bottom. So I put them in the floating trap and changed salts back to IO. 3 of the clams have recovered and are now back on the sandbed. The 4th one is still looking like 2 pieces of shell being held together by a thread. The shells are almost separated. However, it looks like a few more weeks or months and it should recover. I had tried prematurely to put the 4th one back on the sandbed but immediately upon placing it there, a huge bristleworm came out and snatched it to its cave beneath the liverock.

I was lucky to save all of my clams.

[AJ_77]

"A bristle worm ate my clam!" :question: :question:

Is that kind of like, "A dingo ate my baby"?

You gotta kill that rogue worm, Sam...

KILL...

:evil:

[Samw]

"A bristle worm ate my clam!" :question: :question:

Is that kind of like, "A dingo ate my baby"?

You gotta kill that rogue worm, Sam...

KILL...

:evil:


I've been killing every 4-6" bristleworm I could find. They multiple and grow like crazy. I'm losing that battle. :)

Here's a recent pic of my recovering clam. Notice bottom of shells look separated. Well, they are. When I pick up the clam, it feels like the 2 shells are loose. Feels like the shells are held together by the mantle. :rolleyes:

http://www.hyperdream.com/~samw/reef/Clams/146-4619_IMG.jpg

[Aquattro]

Sam, are you adding any additional food for the sick clam? DT's or something? It might help!

[Samw]

Sam, are you adding any additional food for the sick clam? DT's or something? It might help!

Yes, I add that Bioplankton and DT's (both new and old formula). I have so much phytoplankton in my tank, even chemipure can't keep the water clear.

:biggrin:

[Canadian Man]

That clam look's unhinged at the bottom.

It's not a big deal. Des had/has one for a long time now that is unhinged/unattached at it's base

[Samw]

What hinges them together? I assumed it was a muscle of some sort and that it was eaten. Will it grow back?

Oh, my tank during really hot days was hitting 29.9 C with the fan on. Over the last month or 2, I would see 28-29C regularly during the day and 27C in the morning. Not too bad.

[Quinn]

Isn't there some way you can use an elastic to make them reattach or something? I thought Des saw that in one of his books.

[Delphinus]

I'm still not entirely convinced that I didn't lose my clams last year from heat stress, but mine were considerably smaller than yours (and Brad's). So who knows there are just too many variables at play. Ultimately, I don't recommend that people go heating up their tanks -- just because one survives a thing doesn't necessarily mean all will. I think trying to keep things within the "normal reef range" is still best (i.e., it still behooves us to take corrective measures if a tank is getting too hot or too cold). I imagine also things like how fast the temperature goes up, and how fast it comes down again, may also play a significant role in determining how things will fare in the long run. Also compounding things are that a clam can seem perfectly fine one day and be completely gone the next, so without any lead up clues that something is amiss you end up guessing at what might have gone wrong and who knows how far back you have to look in such cases. Ultimately I am happy for you that your clam has survived the high heat (and you too Brad of course :mrgreen: ) and I hope that they continue to do well over the long-term. My experience with clams in over 5 years now of reefkeeping has been these are the single most vexing creatures for me, the longest I had one was about 2.5 years. That one was a beauty of a derasa and it had lived through my little "float valve incident of infamy" but it didn't survive long after a crocea I had perished. It seems to me ... and this is just my theory now I have nothing but my own anecdotal evidence to back me up ... that one of the worst things to happen to a clam is to have a different clam in the same tank die. There must be some kind of toxic spew off or pathogen released that clams are particularly susceptible to, when that happens because I have had the phenomemon happen to me several times now. I don't trust clams .... I want to keep my reefs within tolerances but that's just me. I have no interest, for example, in trying to breed clams so I don't see any need to cook 'em just yet. :mrgreen: I am glad, that my experiences don't really seem to be the norm (they are the norm for me, but not the norm for everyone else .... :mrgreen: )

cheers

[Canadian Man]

What hinges them together? I assumed it was a muscle of some sort and that it was eaten. Will it grow back?

Oh, my tank during really hot days was hitting 29.9 C with the fan on. Over the last month or 2, I would see 28-29C regularly during the day and 27C in the morning. Not too bad.

The material that does it, I don't know. I don't know if it will grow back either. Like teevee said you can put an elasic around it but I would just leave it be. If you put an elasic around it, It would have to be very loose in order for the clam to not have to fight the elasic. Des has had his unhinged clam for a long time with no prob's.

[StirCrazy]

but mine were considerably smaller than yours (and Brad's).
cheers

Mine was 1.5 to 2".

I am not saying that all the deaths were not caused by heat or vise versa, I am mearly trying to show that I think it was a little reckless saying 100% forsure that it was not a pathogen and rather heat had to be the problem.

My clam being a small one shoudl have easaly kicked the bucket in that temp acording to the theory that was being posted on the board by a few people at that time.

Also my mishap goes to lend more credit to a pathogen explanation than a heat one.

I agree that we should still strive to keep tems in a normal temp range to give every critter in our tanks the best chance at life we can, but also if you look at the reefs whare some of these clams are taken it is very shallow, Some even are out of the water a bit at low tide. thinking about this it would seam to me that the tempatures in the water a low tide could be much warmer than at high tide.

take out here for example in the summer the water temp is 52 degrees.. to cold for swimming, but yet some beaches the water is actualy warm during low tide (I would guess high 70's ) and then again in tidal pools we have anenomens, crabs, fish, ext.. and some of them go from 52 degrees to over 90 degrees. I am rambling now so I will stop.

Steve

[Delphinus]

I agree, there are places in the water column that are subject to some pretty wild temp fluctuations. I would imagine that the rate of change in those areas may not be insignificant in terms of what lives there and what tolerates it. It seems to me a tidal pool will warm up slowly as the day goes on, and then cool very quickly once the tide rolls in again.

I don't know if it was me who said "100% emphatically" that it was not disease but that it was heat, but I think I had tried to suggest that heat was a possible cause. Darren's clam exhibited similar behaviour as mine did. Mine started showing the bysal-gland-through-the-inhalant-siphon phenomenon immediately following the day I once forgot to turn my hood fans back on after I had disconnected them for some work I was doing. But in my case the temp only reached 94F. So let me state for the record "I'm not really sure at all" but I think that heat may have played a role in at least mine. But who knows, maybe it was going to do that anyways and it's just pure coincidence that it happened after the warm day. I have nothing to go on except the good word of the vendor that it was a different source as the infamous clams of last year (Pohnpeii clams I had heard) but then again that is not to say that it wasn't some other pathogen either (I'm sure there are plenty that spell trouble). I do agree that pathogens are a problem with clams more so than other things. Like for example how a chain reaction seems to happen when one dies all the others seem to follow suit (sometimes).

I had searched for any kind of info for the byssal gland sticking out of the inhalant siphon and I came up completely empty. Nobody offered any hints so all I had to go with was whatever I came up with. The only thing that was out of character was the heat spike.

It could just be I bought a weak clam ... who knows. Unlucky in clams. Ultimately I've got not a lot to work with other than guesses.