Another multi-clam problem...

[rwbogard]

I would check your topoff water and make sure your RO/DI unit is functioning properly, if using one. The green hue is ok, but the clams are bleached. Also, dosing alcohol doesn't seem to make sense IMHO. Alcohol is a stressor of all cell types, including bacteria, and in the lab we use alcohol to stimulate hyperventilation of the cell. It has the similar effect of applying heat to cells - speeds up metabolism, although stressful. Alcohol also effects membrane permeability. I guess it's diluted out of toxic concentrations, but I am doubtful you'll find Stoli Vodka in the natural marine setting .

 

[rwbogard]

You may want to try lowering the clams a bit first, and see how they respond. If response is unfavorable then move closer to light. Clams respond differently on the individual level, therefor generalizations shouldn't be made as to specific species of clams loving more or less light. I found this to be the case for my clams (they responded just the opposite as to what light requirements for each type were specified). This may differ for you though, so just try a little experimenting.

 

[jnarowe]

My RO/DI is functioning quite well. My clams have shown some signs of bleaching throughout my reef keeping experience from-time-to-time, even before I had put the wrasses in.

I however have never tested for heavy metals. I have all the materials inbound and will be sending a water sample out to a lab as well.

 

[jnarowe]

Clams are about the same. Poly Filters are not changing to any color either. Got the lab stuff in so I just need to take some samples and send it back.

Checked for copper and O2 but the Red Sea tests I got are not very good indicators. Still have to do the silicate test.

 

[rwbogard]

Well you've covered just about all your bases, and everything seems great! Any stray voltage perhaps? I had a heater that went bad once and was sending current into the the tank at infrequent intervals. The only way I noticed it was one day I was working in the tank for an extended period an my arms kept twitching! As you could imagine I was quite puzzled, but I later found a small hole in the wiring for the probe attached to the heater unit. The stray current seemed to **** everything thing in the tank off, as I would notice all of the clams retracted and occasionally all of the fish would dart in all directions! After eliminating the problem everything was fine.

 

[jnarowe]

That is certainly a good point. I havehad stray voltage issues in th epast. I have 4 grounding probes in the system, but that doesn't mean that the voltage is gone, just that I don't get killed! I am not really sure how to investigate that though. The Poly Filters are the same. Just the brown indicitive of organics.

 

[jnarowe]

So an update: I sent samples of my water to Aquarium Water Testing just to see if anything was out-of-whack but the results don't really show much of interest.

Clams are still not too good. Some days they look better, and other days they look worse.

Tank Water:
Water Test Summary
Ammonia (NH3-4) ........................Good ......................................... 0.008
Nitrite (NO2)................................Good ......................................... 0.003
Nitrate (NO3)...............................Good .............................................0.2
Phosphate (PO4) ..........................Good ........................................... 0.03
Silica (SiO2-3) .............................Good .............................................0.5
Potassium (K) ...............................Low............................................. 278
Calcium (Ca)................................Good ............................................ 380
Boron (B) ....................................Good .............................................3.9
Molybdenum (Mo)......................... High..............................................0.2
Strontium (Sr) .............................Good ........................................... 10.2
Magnesium (Mg) ..........................Good .......................................... 1294
Iodine (I¯)...................................Good ........................................... 0.03
Copper (Cu++) ............................Good ........................................... 0.01
Alkalinity (meq/L)..........................Low............................................ 2.04


RO/DI Water:
Water Test Summary
Ammonia (NH3-4) ........................Good ......................................... 0.004
Nitrite (NO2)................................Good ......................................... 0.002
Nitrate (NO3)...............................Good .............................................0.3
Phosphate (PO4) ..........................Good ........................................... 0.03
Silica (SiO2-3) .............................Good .............................................0.5
Potassium (K) ...............................Low.................................................0
Calcium (Ca).................................Low.................................................0
Boron (B) .....................................Low..............................................1.6
Molybdenum (Mo).........................Good .............................................0.0
Strontium (Sr) ..............................Low..............................................0.0
Magnesium (Mg) ...........................Low............................................. 139
Iodine (I¯)....................................Low............................................ 0.02
Copper (Cu++) ............................Good ........................................... 0.00
Alkalinity (meq/L)..........................Low............................................ 0.41

Fresh Made Salt Water:
Ammonia (NH3-4) ........................ High.......................................... 0.070
Nitrite (NO2)................................Good ......................................... 0.001
Nitrate (NO3)...............................Good .............................................0.3
Phosphate (PO4) ..........................Good ........................................... 0.05
Silica (SiO2-3) .............................Good .............................................0.0
Potassium (K) ...............................Low............................................. 333
Calcium (Ca)................................Good ............................................ 429
Boron (B) ....................................Good .............................................4.3
Molybdenum (Mo)......................... High..............................................0.2
Strontium (Sr) .............................Good .............................................8.5
Magnesium (Mg) ..........................Good .......................................... 1213
Iodine (I¯)...................................Good ........................................... 0.03
Copper (Cu++) ............................Good ........................................... 0.03
Alkalinity (meq/L).........................Good ........................................... 3.25


It appears from comparing to my tank water that my system is doing its job the way it should be. It's a little misleading because of the low alk and ca numbers but that was due to an equipment issue.

I am a little concerned about the ammonia and nitrate numbers for the fresh SW. They are higher than my RO/DI which leads me to believe that it is the salt. I am going to look into K a little more as well.

Nitrate, Phosphate, potassium, and copper are all lower in the reef than in the salt. This whole project was to try and figure out what is going on with my clams, but I just don't see anything that would be of particular concern. So I am back to the drawing board. They are all not up to par and I can't figure out why. They show bleaching and are not showing full mantles. I know the cleaner wrasses pick at them.

Any theories for me to look into?

 

[mbbuna]

is the cleaner wrasse still in the same tank with the clams?

 

[jnarowe]

BTW, I tested for stray vlotage a few days ago and got nothing at all from the display.

 

[jnarowe]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11730638#post11730638 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mbbuna
is the cleaner wrasse still in the same tank with the clams?

yes they are. I did a test and pulled a couple of clams out of the display and put them into my QT for about a week. Even with that higher nutrient condition, the clams seemed to get a little better. That one tear drop never gave up the green hue though.

 

[mbbuna]

if they seemed to get better in the QT i would keep them there for a while

 

[jnarowe]

easier said than done. and that still doesn't solve the underlying problem. how much does alkalinity affect clams?

 

[Kalkbreath]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11730863#post11730863 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jnarowe
easier said than done. and that still doesn't solve the underlying problem. how much does alkalinity affect clams?

It is the single most important water parameter.
Low alkalinity has an effect on just about every chemical relationship in seawater.
I have experimented with ultra high alk levels on maxima.
Higher Alk levels are more favorable to clam health then low levels.
Even 7 or 8 meq/l seems better then a low 2 or 3 meq/l level.

You and other clam keepers also need to consider that salinity has a huge impact on the readings of test kits.
Alk readings of 2 to 3 meq/l at 1.027 salinity is ultra low and would read 1 meq/l if you added top off water to bring the salinity down to 1.021.

Also pay mind to contaminant elements found in some salt and supplements.
Most heavy metals are not commonly tested for in reef tanks.
Tridacna are very specific about where they grow in the worlds ocean reefs, due to a dislike of higher levels of certain elements in the water.
Even the water quality in places like Hawaii wont support tridacna due to water chemistry issues with the surrounding volcanic sediments and such. ( yes some Gigas were reportly found in the 1800s )

Whats in the water does matter with tridacna.

Even more so with teardrops it seems.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2005/11/aafeature1

 

[mbbuna]

WOW, i actualy agree with you Kalk (for the most part )

low alk can make clams do some funky things

 

[jnarowe]

Thanks for the post!

yeah, I did have lower salinity for a while and I am still battling the alk situation. What happened is that I discovered that my temp. probe was completely plated and when I recalibrated everything my pH turned out to be much lower. Therefore my Ca reactor has not been turning on and I don't think I have enough evap rate to make up for it in kalk. I have been dosing alk manually to bump it up.

Interestingly enough, the AWT test results do not mention salinity, which I think is an important issue.

I hate to make fast moves though, and everything was going so well until the dino attack. I have been working with the probes but at this point don't trust them all too much.

What do you think about K and clams?

That article is interesting of course and is really where my brain was headed in terms of heavy metals. I just don't knwo how to get my water tested for that.

I am going to continue to bump the alk and work on re-tuning my system. I guess the lesson learned is to not trust those damn probes! Prior to the dino event I used to test my water every week. Then I got all torqued about the dinos and tested like a madman. Since I have not been doing it as much as I should so I need to get back into my routine.

 

[jnarowe]

BTW, "lower salinity" to me means 1.024 - 1.025.

 

[jnarowe]

So the last clam in QT is on the way out. That's 7 clams in about 1.5 weeks. The one in QT looked just fine too. I really am puzzled by this and think it could be one of three causes:

1. Harassment in the display caused irreperable damage.

2. The clams contracted some disease.

3. Maybe there is a connection to my dosing of baking soda during the Winter.

I have not read anything about this being a possible cause, but as I was mulling over past events, the way the clams reacted, etc. it seems to me that they started having problems around the time I added the cleaner wrasses. I did see them picking at the clams 2 - 3 months ago, although I have not recently.

But that was also about the time I started dosing baking soda to boost alkalinity and raise the pH so the Ca reactor would start up. As I was thinking about it today, and my attempts to revive them in the QT icluding feeding, I realized that these are filter feeders and that maybe the baking soda was giving them some problem.

Anyone have any comment on this?

 

[Kalkbreath]

Just so you know, The USDA purity standard for baking soda is actually not low enough in Lead and a few other heavy metals to be sold in Europe for human consumption.
So yes it might have been the Baking soda.
But it also could be any of a number of other supplements, like hobby grade Calcium or Carbonates.
The amount of heavy metals in the current selections of American hobby grade salts is also suspect, check out the most current salt studies (Shemik)and notice that most of the popular brands contain multiple excessive heavy metal concentrations , some of which are several hundred times that of seawater.
Bivalves are quite sensitive to metals in seawater.
Tridacna only survive in the wild in the most pristine of environments.
Ever notice that hobbyists as of late cant seem to keep snails alive long term?
Well Tridacna clams and snails are closely related.
So the idea that some heavy metal contamination has found its way into in your aquarium and has poisoned the system is quite likely .

DO we really know whats in the supplements we add to our aquariums? Heck the number bad salt batches as of late by even the major salt manufacturers ...makes many wonder how we would even know or catch it if there was a "bad" batch of Calcium supplements or Buffer?


We spend so much attention to whats in our tap water , and using R.O. to cleanse the source water we put in our tanks......yet we rarely consider that the supplements we add to our systems can have many of the same pollutants and metals and at even much higher levels then the unfit tap water we so skillfully avoided when processing the source water.

 

[johnnybravo234]

I think just about everything has been suggested. I had a wrasse do the same thing to me. Did you add a bunch of carbon yet? You could have had a sponge die off or something. I heard that there are some sponges that can randomly drop dead and poison aquariums. If I were you Id do small daily water changes. Those are very nice teardrops. Good Luck!

 

[johnnybravo234]

Kalkbreath - I had a bad batch of B-ionic kill my clams off a couple years ago.