New Clam & Dosing Iron - now 2 Pinched Mantles

rdmpe

New member
I've had a small crocea for a few months now and it has been doing great, looking good and obvious growth along the rim of the shell.

I recently added a derasa, and just about the same time I started dosing about 1 mL / day of seachem flourish iron supplement to help my macro out a little bit.

I noticed right away that the clam mantles had some parts that didn't flatten out the way they normally should. I had no idea that iron could possibly be connected to this untill doing some reading here about it.

So I obviously stopped dosing iron, and am running a bunch of carbon in a canister filter to try to pull the iron back out of the system. Hopefully between the cheato in the fuge and the carbon, the iron will not last long.

I have not done a fwd yet, since I hate to add more stress to the clams, but I sure don't want to lose them either. What do you guys think? Here are the best pictures I could come up with so far...

Crocea - pinched at the left side

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Derasa - pinched at the far left

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Why do you think dosing Iron have anything to do with it? PMD is an infection, not irretation from Iron.
More likely the new clam is a sick clam. It got your other clam infected. Your clams do look like they got PMD.
 
I've read on RC that availability of iron has an impact on the life cycle of the protozoan that causes pinched mantle disease. So I dug around and turned up this abstract which seems to confirm that
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12919819&dopt=Abstract
I wish I could remember exactly when I first noticed PM on my crocea because I think it correlated more with the iron treatments than with the new derasa. Unfortunately the iron treatment started only a few days before the derasa so I don't remember clearly. But given the other evidence that iron plays a role, it seems likely to me...
 
Here's another thing that seems to indicate that iron levels are linked to perkinsus protozoan biology...

Identification of Candidate Genes for Chemotherapeutic and/or Genetic Intervention in the Crassostrea virginica/Perkinsus marinus System using Expression Sequence Tags (EST). Gerardo R. Vasta, Jose A. Fernandez-Robledo and Eric J. Schott, Center of Marine Biotechnology, UMBI
Is it possible to develop drug therapy or genetic techniques that can target Perkinsus marinus genes responsible for Dermo and thereby inactivate them? By studying genomic data of P. marinus when it is subjected to conditions that increase disease virulence (e.g., high salinity and high iron), Vasta and his colleagues' findings should suggest whether such therapies are worthwhile pursuing.

Here is an interesting post on nano-reefs.com
http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?&showtopic=74863&st=20&p=682103&#entry682103
That explains this research
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7883057&dopt=Abstract
much better than I did...

Most of the research seems to be centered around oysters since that is such a big industry. But it seems that the same pathogen is involved in our problems. Here is an abstract of some research being done in Texas
http://www.tard.state.tx.us/index.php?mode=Listing&rl_id=1075
 
I've been trying to dig up as much info as possible to feel more confident that it really is likely that my clam PM is linked to my iron dosing.

Here is a quote from more oyster research
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache...umd.edu/oysters/disease/combatting/index.html[/url]
In fact, since iron is also essential to the production of many important oyster proteins, the parasite must compete with its host for this important element -- a lack of iron would slow proliferation of P. marinus, as well as affect its ability to evade the oyster's immune response. In the saline waters of Chesapeake Bay, under well-oxygenated conditions, free iron concentrations are low, and most iron is bound into very stable iron-phosphate complexes in the Bay sediments. However, in warm months much of the deeper waters of the Chesapeake are extremely low in oxygen (due to nutrient enrichment and decay of resulting algal blooms). Under these conditions, the iron-phosphate compounds break down, releasing free iron into the water column. This ready availability of free iron may help stimulate the proliferation of Dermo disease in Chesapeake Bay. Certainly there is a seasonal component to Dermo virulence which might reflect the greater iron availability (and uptake of the element by oysters) found in summer months.

Given all of the work going on related to oysters/perkinsus/iron, it seems to me that the iron dosing is most likely where my problem started. It sounds like the protozoan is always around but that it takes certain good conditions for it to bloom into a problem. In any case, I am definitely not going to dose iron again :eek1: but have to try to help the clams overcome their current infection as well.

Several of the research abstracts that I read mention the perkinsus is sensitive to salinity levels, hence the effectiveness of fresh water dips...
 
There got to be many disease that affect clams and other by valves. I have not read anywhere about the actual pathogen in PMD. I don't think we know what orgnism cause the PMD. I do know that PMD often affect the exposed mantle of the clams, and the fact that non Tridacnid bivalves do not have exposed mantle, I doubt that the protozoa studied in all the references you quoted have anything to do with PMD.
I read the thread from the nano reef. I don't think what mwp got was
PMD. In my experience MWPdoes knot cause quick death in otherwise healthy clams. I know since I fight the PMD for over 1 years before I got rid of them back in 2002. The very fist post I wrote regarding PMD, first mention of this disease by anyone can be found in this thread:

http://reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=169654#169654
Another thread going on at about the same time I was involved in at the same time
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showt...page=25&highlight=Pinched Mantel&pagenumber=1

The term Pinched Mantle Disease was coined in these two threads, and others at reefland.com and The Reef Tank BB going on at the same time.

Minh
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8204296#post8204296 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by OrionN
..... I do know that PMD often affect the exposed mantle of the clams, and the fact that non Tridacnid bivalves do not have exposed mantle, I doubt that the protozoa studied in all the references you quoted have anything to do with PMD......
Seems like the PM is just the obvious symptom in tridacnids. That doesn't mean that it is a diffferent agent in the tridactnids than in the other studies, although it could be. I'm not a marine biologist. But there are some obvious similarities between my situation and those studies including the iron involvement and the pathogen's sensitivity to fresh water dips. So maybe it is the same or maybe not. Either way, I think that my clam problems started when I started dosing the iron.
 
So OrionN - I do have a question for you. Did you find that after you dipped all of your clams, then the PM did not return after they were back in your tank? Or did the PM return? What was successful for you in getting rid of the infection, whatever it is?
 
In the first thread on Reefs.org, I explained how and why I came up with FWD as treatment for PMD. My though as to why I think this is a external parasitic infection instead of internal bacterial infection.
After I dipped all my clams at once, PMD never return to my tank. After that fiasco, where I lost thousand dollars worth of clams, I always quarantine my clams before it go to my main tank. The tanks I have now, I have a 24 g Aquapod with 150 W MH as clam quarantine tank.
I did not identify the actual pathogen causeing this disease but was sucessful in curing this disease from my tank without loosing all of my clams.
I again remind everybody that there are likely many disease causing organisms for clams. PMD is just one of these. PMD infected clams have certain symtoms, and course that I think are characteristics for this disease. Just because clams not doing well, does not mean that they have PMD.
 
It seems like I don't have a choice except to do the fwd I guess. I have not read of anyone's clams recovering without doing it.
 
The clams are now in fresh water dip. I did not try to adjust the PH of the ro/di water but I did let the temperature equalize.

The derasa really closed up tight when I pulled it out of the tank, it seems like it might not even get any fresh water inside of it! Anything I should do with it or just let it sit in there?
 
No I didn't check or adjust the ro/di ph. I know some have adjusted it and others don't when they do the fwd. I assume it was pretty low.
 
Just a FYI, I've been dosing iron for better than 6 months, and my clam which I've had for probably 1 1/2 years is fine. I do hope yours make it.

QT everything.
 
i got pm after i starting dosing iron too... but i have no clue if it was related. i have kents iron too, and have since stopped using it.
 
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