To " Mad Scientist" who asked "I take it you have no concerns about the clam disease?"
Of course I am concerned about so called 'clam disease' because last year - I lost 10 clams in a hurry. At that time, it all seemd to happen after I added a wild clam.
I wanted to setup a tank just for clams. And I found the perfect tank for me at MACNA - September 2002. I had success with 7 clams bought from Harbor Aquatic - these are farm raised.
Since then (a few weeks later), I have been buying clams left and right - and I was reading many threads/topics about others experience. My conclusion - I am not convinced that we know the exact cause.
I started with a few clams from ffexpress - they did great and did not affect my farm clams - btw - they are still around from last year. ffexpress said that they kept clams for 2 weeks before selling them. I believe them - because it is in their best interest to make sure clams are healthy. Otherwise - all my clams die and I lost interest again - and they lost a customer. Besides, you should see how frustrated I was when there were many buyers competing for a few selected clams. So - I wonder why others are buying them if concern for clam disease is so great?
Ideally, I would buy farm raised clams. And I did start off by buying many farm raised clams. After a while - the color, pattern, size - do not quite compare with some chuuk clams sold by ffexpress.
If you have seen my tank setup, you'll know that I also added a bunch of corals, fish, in a hurry. In fact, the tank was new - and I was adding things left and right. I had been through mantle pinching problem - I freshwater dipped all of my clams - some made it and some did not. My observation was that farm raised clam did seem to respond better to freshwater dip - while wild clam had a bad reaction to freshwater dip. Of course, I think, because farm raised clams may be shipped better - or collected better.
Nothing is conclusive. It was frustrating that some clams do good - and some clams don't - and this is all in one tank! If disease and panthogen is true, one would expect that all of the clams would die. My only regret is freshwater dip the large wild clams. They were doing fine until I dip them...and I dip them because I thought the correct thing to do is to dip the entire collection.
Right now, I have 6 wild clams (out of which - 3 have been in my tank for a while - i.e. more than 3 months). I witness them going through being happy, unhappy (after fresh water dip), happy (recovering from fresh water dip), unhappy (no idea - maybe adding new corals), and happy.
I have a good idea of what might cause the irritation to some of my clams. There is more than one cause. The fact that I received wild clam - and they do well in my tank for 2 weeks - I am not convinced that 'clam disease' is still a factor here.
It's fair to say that I can keep all of my clams alive if I have a tank for only clams - nothing else (this means no adding coral, fish, rock, whatever). But is this realistic for a home aquarium? heck no. I like to decorate my tank so that it looks like a reef.
What is my point?? Listen to others but draw your own conclusion. If you can learn from your own experience, it would be even better. It's like growing orchids - they are easy - but my growing environment is different than yours.
