Mystery Clam Death

[Nicole8ca]

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

[Flash]

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

[Nicole8ca]

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.

[fkshiu]

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.

[Nicole8ca]

ok, but what exactly am I looking for underneath?

[mark]

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"

[Delphinus]

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.