I speak from experience of losing way more clams then most people except for Fishytime ( we both got wiped out around the same time a while back ) but sad to say both Swill & Spike your clams are as good as gone. Once they start to show the insides of the shell & gets progressively worse it's just a matter of time. :sad:

so should i try to dip or no?

As others have said dipping a clam is even worse for them & it's already to late.

The snails are on it for a reason

That to & I imagin if you where to lift it up & look at the bottom you will more then likely find several bristle worms in it.

I don't know if anybody mentioned it but for a freshwater dip the water must be at the same temperature and at the same PH so that not to shock the clam.

not doing this part will probably kill the clam.

...and now I am loosing the other clam :(

thats about right , its common for one clam to die then another die as well, the issue your new clam had has been passed to your other clam , could be a pathogen of sorts we dont know but its pretty common, sorry to say it but all your clams are probably toast except the most hardy.


have you ruled out predators like pyramid snails?


where did you get all your clams , how long have you had them,what do you use for source water and what type of clam are they........your answers are prob in one of these four questions unless your tank was inadequate for them to begin with.



this is the reason you dont see clam dominated tanks very often , in fact you never see them , a nice as they are you would think lots of people would do a clam only tank , realistically though they tend to die in numbers and for odd reasons of which prob has nothing to do with us or has everything to do with us.

Crap...pyramid snails!!! No one mentioned anything about these guys prior to you. See long story short, I bought this tank from a guy here in town, he owned the tank with full setup for about 6 years. He said these clams for about 2 or 3 years. This tank has all the bells and whistles. I use R/O water and for type of clam, I'm not sure, he couldn't tell me and I asked on here but no one seemed to know. It was the only thing that bothered me about buying this tank, I really wanted to be familiar with everything in it and wanted to read up on all the corals since most were new to me (went from LPS to SPS tank overnight almost) ...anyway, I have pyramid snails for sure, they were just covering the huge clam and actually before I dumped the clam I thought I would save the snails, so I took a toothbrush and brushed them all off into my Seahorse tank :( I am not sure how much harm they can do in there to the Seahorses but I am as we speak trying to get them all out of that tank....I've seen them in the past stuck to the Seahorse so I hope to god that they didn't harm them...ugh...sometimes this hobby frustrates me to no end...it is my fault I guess though for not doing my research on owning a clam :( Fail!!!

thats ok it happens man , whenever a coral, fish or invert isnt doing well always look at water quality, enviroment and tankmates/predators this will usually narrow down your search pretty fast.

pyramid snails i believe are nocturnal and a carnivores , they will also eat large snails( ive witnessed them eating smaller ones)

usually a few snails wont knock off a clam but they are almost always in numbers , they hide in the snad and rocks untll dark then go hunting.

usually a brush and a fresh water dip will help , there are also wrasse that eat them , my mystery wrasse eats them as my roomate had them in his tank too.

remember for almost everything that lives there is something that hunts it;)


go hunting at 3am with bait ( clam meat )and add a wrasse to get rid of the snails you have if the tank allows for one


cheers and good luck.


denny