Instant Clam Death

[MKramer]

On Saturday, I picked up a beautiful 3.5" crocea that looked good at the LFS (expected responses, attached to a small piece of rock, no sign of snails, etc.).

I drip-acclimated it for almost 4 hours, and placed it in my display tank after lights-out, at like 9:30pm.

At lights-on the next morning (8am), I eagerly peaked in on him, to found the clam on its side, detached from the rock, almost completely disintegrated-looking, and a huge mass of stringy white mucus coming off it.

Obviously, it was dead.

I'd never had something die so damn fast. This morning I'd noticed my torch coral polyps releasing large amounts of brown mucus, a hammer coral whose tissue was dissolving right off the skeleton (maybe brown jelly?), trumpet corals that are barely inflating and look rather bleached, and a rose BTA that's gotten quite bleached, too.

Any clues what's happening to my tank?

I did a 20% water change after I cleaned up the clam mess. My params before the change:

Temp: 81
SG: 1.024
pH: 8.3
Alk: 8dKH
Calcium: 380
Ammonia: 0
Nitrates: 0

Has anyone ever seen a clam die so fast?

 

[Peabody]

Well, in most cases, 4 hours acclimation would be enough. It could have been sick before, but your other coral problems make me suspicious some chemistry coul dbe out of whack.

My first reaction is your CA and ALK are low. The alk is a little too low for my comfort, but they shouldn't spell instant death.

Are you adding any suppliments of any kind? How are you measuring salinity? WHat brand of test kits? Is this your first clam?

 

[Telecaster]

Sorry bout the clam bro. Which LFS did you get it from?

 

[kfisc]

acht!!! could it be other chemicals? phosphate, copper, etc.? R.O. water being used? I'm sure you've thought of doing a much larger water change, testing for other things...sorry for your loss- sharply painful.

 

[MKramer]

Peabody:
I used to drip kalk, but haven't done that for about a month (which would explain the sub-optimal CA and Alk, I imagine). Otherwise, no supplements. The CA and Alk kits are both Safilert, I don't recall who makes the pH one, and the Ammonia/Nitrate tests are just those cheap little test strips. I had a LFS confirm those after the fact, though.

I also have a Remora on this 29g (+10g sump), but its skimmate production is quite low (still trying to figure out why that is).

And, yeah, this is my first clam. The tank is almost a year old now, as well.

Telecaster: Thanks, I got this guy at Jeff's Exotic Fish

kfisc: I guess that's what I'm trying to figure out. I wasn't sure what chemicals to start testing. I've done a couple more water changes since, but have saved some of the original water for testing. And, yes, using RO/DI for evaporate top-off, and natural sea water for changes.

I guess I'll start next by testing phosphates and copper.... Because the rest of my corals are still slowly dying.

Can coral brown jelly disease affect clams? If I recall correctly, it's a protozoan that preys on the zooxanthellae.