near disaster

[texasreefer]

I nearly had a disaster in my tank tonight. One of my return lines came loose and drained the tank. When I walked in there was about 2" of water left in the tank. I don't no how long it was like that. It could of been as short as a few minutes are as long as 4 hours. Luckily I had water already mixed for a water change as well as water circulating in a new tank I'm setting up. So I fixed the return and refilled the tank. My clams are opening back up like nothing happened. However I'm worried they may of been out of the water too long and were baking under a 400W MH. My fish found pockets of water and seem to be fine so I'm not to worried about them. I had some live brine I put in earlier as a treat and there were a few still swimming around after I replaced the water. My question is how long can clams stay out of water and survive? I know they can survive out of the water for a while.

 

[sahin]

They should be fine. Clams such as Croceas can be found very near the waters surface, and at times of the day they can get exposed to air for hours at a time so it should be a problem. Even with the halides. Just be sure the event is not repeated.

FWIW I had SPS corals out of the water for over 7 hours when I was takinng out my DSB. Onather time a Derasa clam was out of the water for over an hour as well.

I even had bristle worms live overnight in a bucket with just enough water to keep them moist and not even fully submerged and they still lived. They were baby ones mostly and I put returned them to my tank.

You are lucky you had so much "spare" water already mixed. Good luck.

 

[texasreefer]

All the clams are Croceas, and when I checked them this morning they were all doing fine. The return line was a temporary line I ran for a canister filter to polish the water. I put in a Rose BTA in the other day and haven't seen it since I put it in and this morning it was out and puffed up bigger than it was when I bought it. Basically it was like doing about a 90% water change. Normally I try to keep at least 20 gallons of water ready for topoff or water changes in case I need it in a hurry. Next time I hook up the filter I'll make sure the return line is very secure.

 

[Barry N.]

Glad all turned out ok