FW dip=permanent cure or bandaid?

[pecan2phat]

It's when the mantle of the clam starts to curl inward at the edges either in one spot or can spread to the entire mantle. This is usually accompanied with slight reccession of the mantle and eventually the clam will not expand fully.
So in a nut shell, starts with curling of the mantle edge, progressing to the above with mantle reccession or retraction, progressing to all the above with the clam starting to only slightly open.
I'm sure others will give you a more technical explaination.

 

[Travis]

Maybe somebody could describe or, better yet, post a picture of what pinched mantle looks like. I would like to know what to watch out for.

Do a search for pinched mantles in this forum and you'll find some. There were a bunch posted about a year ago.

 

[gophia]

Besides the temp, do you guys adjust the pH of the water as well prior to dipping?

 

[Travis]

Besides the temp, do you guys adjust the pH of the water as well prior to dipping?

I have adjusted the ph almost every time that I dipped. There were a couple times I didn't and it really stressed out the clams. One time I even lost one. That was the only time I lost a clam dipping it out of many times.

 

[mia1974]

I am in the process of setting up a prop system that will be separate from my main display tank. I have been battling this pinching problem for close to 2 years now as well. I have some clams that have been redipped over 5 times. I did have a time period where 6 months went by with no pinching and I was elated that the problem seemed to be gone. However, once I added a new clam -which was in the previous owners tank for 3 years with no problems-the pinching began once again.

I have also noticed that after larger water changes the problem seems to go away for ahwile amd the clams will appear almost normal and I at that point begin to think that the problem is all in my mind...but then it eventually starts up again within a very short period of time.

I think that the clams continue to grow because whatever it is that is doing this has almost 20 clams to irritate so the effects ar being spred out

I am not sure as to what theories one could come up with based on the above observations.

After reading up quite a bit on this subject I think I will dip them all again and then put them into the prop system for awhile once it is running. I will leave the display free of clams for a few weeks and then reintroduce them. I will post any observations in this thread.

Travis: have you lost any clams due to pinching in the past year? Or does dipping keep them healthy if done regularily?

 

[pecan2phat]

Besides the temp, do you guys adjust the pH of the water as well prior to dipping?

A lot of reefers will tell you that they don't and that they just make sure that the temp is correct. I do adjust the PH. It's a little easier if you have a PH monitor to use.

 

[Travis]

mia1974, I've never lost a clam to the pinching disease. I tend to redip them at the first signs of when the pinching is coming back. Like I said in my previous post... I recently tried the dip without compensating for ph. I think Minh said that he just adjusted for temperature and he has had success so I tried it with only adjusting for the temp. I dipped them for the regular 30 minutes and they were more stressed out than they had ever been after previous dips where I also adjusted the ph. I lost one clam and another one ended up with a hole in it between the incurrent and excurrent siphon.:eek2: The hole was about the size of a dime and the clam recovered smoothly in a couple weeks. That was a few weeks ago and I haven't seen any pinching come back.

I'm not going to jump to any conclusions because I have something much worse going on right now. I added some clams about 2 months ago and I think one of them introduced a much worse disease into my tank than the pinching disease. My clams are dropping like flies.:mad2: Only one clam is affected at a time. It retracts into its shell a little more each day until it stops opening and dies. Then the disease spreads to another clam until that one dies and so on. So far I've lost 4 clams to this. I could be wrong about it being a diseas because I do have a CBB in the tank and I've caught him nipping at the clams on rare occasions. I haven't been around to watch the tank much lately so he could be the culprit but I really doubt it. I've never had a problem keeping my clams alive until now. Heck my clams and a few fish were about the only survivors of my tank crash back in February. Very frustrating to say the least.

Please do post your results with quarantineing your clams after the dip.