Brad!

[Mares77]

My maxima did the same thing a few weeks back..but it is still doing well...hope that makes you feel better.....

[DJ88]

Well mine started spewing clouds of sperm or whatever about two days ago. It's gone now.

Black max still looks ok.

My temp never goes above 82 Tony. As soon as it hits 81.5 MH goes out. No major spikes.

[Delphinus]

Oh no, Darren, I'm sorry to hear it. :(

Yeah, it's really too bad those chillers are such incredible expenses. But it almost does seem a necessity for the few weeks per year that temperature is going to be a problem. I don't know.

[AJ_77]

Even the black one? That is heinous; they were beautiful.

Alan

[Mares77]

Well....it finally caught up to me....LAst night i thought everything was okay...this morning i lost the blue maxima...Sad Day!!! :(

[EmilyB]

Is this just happening to Maximas ?

I have a derasa and was very disturbed to read in this thread that the pathogen can be introduced to the tank with a new coral, and not necessarily a new clam. :eek:

[BCReefer]

Darren,

Mine looked healthy, I could not be sure since the clam was against the glass and I could not clean it as I did not want to bother the clam. But it went from looking healthy to an empty shell in 1 night.

I have tried everything from DT’s night, day, extra feedings, moving higher, middle everything but I just end up leaving it where it went and it was happy for about 2 months then gone.

What is happening? I know on reefs they are discussing this in great length and there is some discussion happening on clams on Sunday??

FYI, I had both a Golden and Blue Maxima die on me purchased 2 months apart.

Patrick

[EmilyB]

Originally posted by EmilyB:

I have a derasa

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">which is now gaping...
:mad:

[DJ88]

What is happening?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">IMO. Heat. Plain and simple. Two degree temp swings can be fatal to a clam. I am pretty sure none here who lost a clam has a chiller on their system. Right? How many online had a chiller? Take a look at the time frame of this happeneing. Record heat waves all across North America. Before I buy another clam I am placing a chiller on my system. Easy as that.

Here is my thoughts on causes.

Vibrio, It is found on EVERY tridacnid in nature. I have three other bivalves(a small clam, mussel and oyster) in my tank. None died. So no virus IMO. Has anyone involved in this approached an actual Marine Bio who specializes in tridacnids? None have as far as I can see. All I see is guys like us trying to make sense of something that is so far above our heads it isn't funny. Distributors are in the same boat. Has any distributor had a huge scale wipe out like is going on in our tanks? Maybe one store and even then it wasn't the stock that big distributors carry. It was numbered at aroudn ten. Maybe. Have the harvesters/suppliers had large scale wipe outs? no. If it is only affecting the end purchaser that means you have to look for commonalities in all tanks. The one I see is heat. In summertime temps go up. Temps go up we have more losses.

Unless something drastic happens reefs don't change two degrees in the time frames we see in our tanks. We can see a swing of two degrees in less than an hour in some cases. Can you imagine the energy it would take to raise the temp of a reef by two degrees in a couple of hours?? It takes one kilojoule to heat one pound of water one degree fahrenheit or one calorie to heat one gram of H2O by one degree celsius. Now to heat millions of gallons of moving/turbulent H2O on a reef by two degrees you would need (say 1,000,000 gallons) 16,000,000 Kjoules

one lb of water is ~ one pint. With there being 8 pints in a gallon that means 1,000,000 gallons weighs 8,000,000 lbs. 8,000,000 times 1kjoule per degree times two for two degrees gives us 16,000,000 KILOjoules of energy. And that is assuming a constant heating of all the water in question. No cooling due to wind or evaporation or cooler water coming in with the current. But with the reef water being changed so rapidly, it would take much more to get the reef to shift by two derees.

That is my .02 on this whole thing.. lol

Personally we need to stop blaming the stores, shippers, suppliers etc. The cause is right in our own homes. IMO

Deb,

Gaping doesn't necessarily mean your Derasa is on it's way out. I have seen my purple max one gape and was fine for the longest time. In a thread on RC a distributor even says gaping isn't always a sign of impending death. So there is hope yet. :D

[DJ88]

I'll add this in..

The most probable root of a problem is usually the simplest one.

This has turned into a witch hunt for some mysterious disease, when there is probably evidence availabe to answer 90% or more of the losses right in front of each hobbiests face. Your thermometer.

but this was all my thoughts on it. You can believe what you want. I know what I think with some time to think and read about it.

JMVHO

[ 27 July 2002, 14:20: Message edited by: DJ88 ]