High Tide Aquatics

Help with our Clam

mray2660

mray2660

Supporting Member
BARcard
Today our clam looks like he is in serious stress. We checked him out and mantle is gone and he does not respond movement and is not opening. Everything appeared to be doing well two days ago. Have not moved him since his original placement and appeared to doing well for the past few months.

Any suggestions. Salinity 1.025, ph 8.2 phosphates 0.0 nitrates 0, alk 7, temp 77, CA 450.

Mike Ray
 
What do you typically keep your alk at? Personally, 7 seems a little low to me. I am guessing this may have cause a PH swing that might have stress out your clam and killed it.
 
the alk is a little low, shouldnt kill your clam though.. was it ever attached to your rocks? they have a little soft spot on the bottom of them, if that was torn that will kill them too... clams do feed of nitrates too, i feed my tank with RN products to help feed my clam also...
 
Thanks for the advice. That is the spirit of club.

FYI

1) Have not noticed a pH swing in testing
2) We did feed the clam with RN products
3) Usually when we have low ALK our zoos close up in this tank. Note 7 ALK is with API test kit. Still need to make sure that we properly measuring this parameter. I need to get a hold of the BAR ALK standard.
4) All of our other corals seem to doing well. The only thing that we can not control is other critters in the tank that may have just pestered the clam and stressed him out. 2 months ago we added GFO reactor which has lowered our phosphates to 0 there by lowing our algae growth wonder is this changed the chemistry.

Mike
 
im running a reactor with phosban and its happy as a clam! haha get it?... but really its doing just fine... how much media have you put in the reactor? and how much flow are you pushing through your reactor?
 
Thanks for all the excellent comments and advice. Last night we went to see Robert at Neptune with a water sample. Apparently our SPG was little high (1.028). Our swing hygrometer was reading 1.024-0.025. The other problem is we were pushing ALK. We were using API test kit and trying to keep ALK 8-9 so apparently we were over compensating. Our ALK was okay 9.6 using Salfiert test kit just measurement error using API kit.

We broke down and purchased a refractometer and ELOS test kit. Oh I guess that we can chalk this one up to learning experience. We need to practice better QC and get some reference solutions to verify test kits and measuring instruments.

Mike Ray
 
Robert

The Elos Kit matched the numbers that you had at the shop for ALK. Since we made the adjustment and lowered the salinity and have stopped pushing the ALK many of the corals are looking great. Thanks for the help. I guess you pay for why you get.

Mike Ray
 
You're absolutely welcomed, Mike. Glad you got it all figured out. And Thanks a lot for doing the ALK comparision with your kit for me. We only recently carry the ELOS brand so now we at least have some sort of baseline data for it vs Salifert.
 
From the RN line only Phyto-Feast will feed your tridacnid clam.
 
Gresham

We were using it. It is great product. Many of the corals have being doing well with your products. They truely come alive.

Looks like we stressed out the clam chemically based on the responses of our other corals since we got ALK/SAL in control. A learning experience with test kits. Suggestion for a new product a calibration standard for ALK, CA, MG and Sal. This would be a graat product for newbees like me. I supprising that I did not think of this earlier since that is all we using in my line of work.

Mike Ray
 
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