Mystery Clam Death
 

Hi,

I've had this clam for almost two years and if it's not dead it's dying. Calcium is 425, Nitrate zero and Ammonia is zero. I haven't addded any new fish that may be picking on it and everything else seems to be doing fine (anemones and fish).

Can anyone think of something else I should be checking before I lose something else?

Thanks!
Nicole

can you post a pic? describe what it is doing? color and such?

correction- I've added two coral shrimp last week (forgot about those). Could they be picking on the clam?

Yes- I will see if I can take some pictures tonight. The clam is more open now than I've ever seen it and the lips (???) are retreating to inside the clam. I hope that makes sense. It's not the easier to discribe.

Could be the shrimp, but try taking a look underneath. It might be eaten from the inside out by pyramid snails coming through the byssal opening.

ok, but what exactly am I looking for underneath?

and sometimes they just die for no apparent reason. Basically overnight lost a crocea had for a year (no snails, no new additions etc).

As for looking underneath, do a google search on "pyramid snails"

Afraid Mark hit the nail square on the head, sometimes they just die. :( Sometimes there's an obvious reason, many times not.

That's not to say that sometimes they look pretty rough. If you get a spawn event for example they can look pretty rough but then snap back.

But, for whatever reason, one thing I've found to be a terrible thing for a clam in a tank, is for another clam to die in that tank. It can very often lead to a cascading of clam deaths - whether it be from them spiking the tank or something else, I don't know. But I guess what I'm saying is, while on the one hand "don't give up until you're 100% sure" the flip side is if you are close enough to 100% sure that there's no recovery, and you have other clams, you may need to think about pulling it out.