pics of my longest resident after a bristle worm attack(H. hippopus)

bencozzy

bencozzy

New member
well i woke this morning to find my hippopus looking horrible, no real reaction a slight one, and when i moved it a bristle worm was munching on its foot. so i removed the bristle worm and placed all my clams on shells(well ones a piece of slat but i didnt have enough shells to go around)






so now i dont know if it will recover or not??
 
Bristle worms don't "attack" clams to my knowledge.
What they do do however, is eat dead, decaying flesh.

If the worm was eating a part of your clam, it is safe to say that clam is in trouble.

hth,
Sean
 
On a side note, your tank is full of algae...you are having nutrient problems.

This may be a cause of the clams ill health.
 
most of my bristle are in the 1.5" to 3" range, they are opportunistic feeders(they really like cyclopeeze, they steal it from my tulip anemones all the time)

the clam was fine last night when i turned the lights out, and the bristle was attached to it this morning and it looked that way. everything else in the tank is fine.
 
my tank has always had algea like that, i dont have my poly-filters yet they control the algea growth quite well.

ive had the clam for almost 4 months, i dont see a reason why it would fall ill to nutrients and nothing else in the tank wouldnt even show signs of stress.
 
bencozzy said:
most of my bristle are in the 1.5" to 3" range, they are opportunistic feeders(they really like cyclopeeze, they steal it from my tulip anemones all the time)
Click to expand...
No. They are scavengers.
The cyclop-eeze is dead...they scavenged it.
The size of the worms are a moot point.
I have had 12" long worms in my tank that would never attack a healthy coral or animal.
 
bencozzy said:
my tank has always had algea like that, i dont have my poly-filters yet they control the algea growth quite well.

ive had the clam for almost 4 months, i dont see a reason why it would fall ill to nutrients and nothing else in the tank wouldnt even show signs of stress.
Click to expand...
Do you have a skimmer or do water changes?


Clams are weird in that one day they look great and the next day you come home to an empty shell.

Trust me, the clam is not well.
Perhaps you can save it by cleaning up the water coulmn.

Sean
 
i do biweekly water changes and usaully run poly-filters

i dont run a skimmer

i do plan on a water change today and im giving the clam a few days to see if it improves, id hate to loss it its been with me from the beginning of the tank.
 
well i added a bag of purigen and done a 3g water change so far it is reacting a little more now, still looks the same though

ill keep everyone updated on it
 
bencozzy,
I agree with the other guys the worms are scavengers...if they were munching on the clam it was probably already in trouble. Another thing I noticed is that according to what you said your tank is only "almost 4 months" old. I'd think it was too early to have clams in there. Hope it pulls through for you tho.
-Kris
 
well it died, it was gading and i could see a large hole were the foot was supposed to be and it dissected it to see if anything was in it and half its gill and all other organs were eaten, so it didnt have a chance.

but atleast my water is nice and clean now:(
 
Remember, the organs of a DEAD clam were eaten.
The clam was not attacked by the worms.

Do you dose ca and alk?
 
i tested this morning before lights on:
PH 8.4
ALK 180ppm, 3.6meq/l, or 10.1dkh
CA 320ppm

and i will have results for ammonia nitrite and nitrates a little later today(im thinking i might of had a amomonia spike or nitrates are high), i want to get this figured out so i dont lose anything else.

thanks
 
The Calcium is way to low at 320ppm, and clams can be very sensitive. Generally people strive for a reading of 400-440. A clam should be only placed in a well established tank. Placing the clam after the tank has been up for only too months is extremely risky. At the 2 month mark the tank is still trying to get it's bearings and could even be cycling.

Also agree w/ Seant the worm was going after the clam because it was dying. Bristle worms will not go after a healty clam. Also bristle worms can get pretty big, 1-3" is not too bad.

Good luck with you other clams.
 
not to be ignorant---but you people are WRONG. bristleworms are scavengers in ideal conditions, but when they do not have enough to scavenge, they have to resort to other measures in order to eat. i had a 10 inch gigas clam that i watched bristleworms eat their way through the mantle and eat the gills. that same clam is now(8 months later) 12 inches and fully recovered except for the problem thaty the gills have a large section of scar tissue. so no, the tissue was not dead or decaying, it is actually the healthiest clam i have ever had. secondly, i have observed half of my zoanthid colonies being eaten by them as well. i suggest keeping an eye out and removing any bristles you see, and maybe feeding a little more than usual so that they have something to eat aside from your clam. also, clams live on nitrates as well as sugars produced from photosynthesis, so if the nutrients in his tank were high, it would be beneficial to the clam(to a point)
 
ok tested it and ph came out to be 8.0 after lights were on for a bit, ammonia was <0.25 wasnt a perfect zero, nitrite 0, and nitrates 0. i did whole whole tank cleaning and there was lots of detritus stuck on the rocks probably due to the hair algea, i used ro/di water.

so now im going to go to the LFS to have them test phosphates.

i know CA was low but i ran out of aragamilk which maintains it between 380 and 400.(yes i have more on the way)

thanks
 
not to be ignorant---but you people are WRONG. bristleworms are scavengers in ideal conditions, but when they do not have enough to scavenge, they have to resort to other measures in order to eat.
Click to expand...
Well, sort of. The term bristleworms covers all of the polychaetes and they have all sorts of feeding habits, so you can't really make generalizations like that. It's kind of like me saying bristleworms are filterfeeders because tube worms are bristleworms too.

SOME bristleworms such as the eunicids are scavengers in good times but become predatory in lean times. However, that type of feeding is far from the norm with polychaetes. The vast majority are harmless regardless of how much food is available.

Amphinomids, aka fireworms (the ones with calcium bristles) are completely harmless with the exception of one coral eating species which is extremely rare in the hobby. Regardless of how little food there is or how large they get they are always scavengers. They find their food by smell and they do not recognize healthy tissue as food.

Recommending that people take out all the bristleworms they see is pretty ill-conceived IMO.
 
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