In my case I believe it was an infection of some sort. Protozoan or bacterial I suppose... My squamosa was always off and on. I think I gave it 3 fresh water dips over the 2 years that I had it. It would start to show signs of pinch mantle so I'd dip it. Then it would look alight for a little while before it started again. I think whatever was bothering it, that it brought in, transferred to the other clams. The dips may have cured it but then it could have easily contracted the problem again from one of the others. I never dipped all of my clams at once or completely separated them. The next clam I get will be quarantined for at least a month before it goes into my system and I'll be quarantining problematic clams from now on as well.
April: My big gold teardrop maxima of 5 years looks like crap on a Monday and was dead on a Friday.
September: The little Squamosa finally dies, after looking not right all summer... normally when a clam doesn't look healthy its dead within a week so this was really weird. The very next day one of my 5 year old croceas is dead in the morning. The previous night it looked absolutely fine, the same way it had looked for the past 5 years.
October: My 2 year old blue maxima dies after looking dull (poor coloration) for at least a month.
All four of these clams were fresh water dipped at some point while I owned them, some of them more than once. The dipping seemed to cure the problem for a while but then I believe they just re-contracted whatever was infecting them from the other clams.
I've ruled out crabs in my case. My system has been subjected to several interceptor treatments and I own a snowflake moray plus a fu-manchu lionfish. So its not a very crab friendly environment.
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