Dead clam?

[hypertech]

Is it safe to say that a clam who won't extend its mantle, is unresponsive to changes in light and touching it and has a bristleworm on the bottom of the shell is dead and should be removed?

I thought I saw some pinched mantle on one of my clams, so I made up to temp and pH adjusted freshwater and dipped them for 25 minutes as was the protocol I found in my research. Out of three, one never opened back up.

I'm wondering if it is dead and I did something wrong in the treatment.

Oh, and don't worry wkjames - it isn't your clam - it is the nicer of my 2 :(

[patent]

Sad to hear.

[Zibba]

bummer dude.

how are the other two doing after the dip?

[hypertech]

Definitely irritated a little bit, but they stuck their mantles right back out and they look better.

So, the consensus seems to be that I need to pull it and toss it before my nitrates spike?

[YiNYaNg]

From the day you got it how long was it until it got a FWD?

[patent]

So, the consensus seems to be that I need to pull it and toss it before my nitrates spike?

Don't count my post toward a consensus. I am admittedly clueless about when you should pull it. I've seen animals come back from all kinds of thing, and I don't know clams well enough to offer anything here. I would do daily testing though, at the very least, to check for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate (yes, I am that anal).

Edit to add: when did you do the dip? If just today, I would definitely wait before pulling him.

[hypertech]

From the day you got it how long was it until it got a FWD?


It was from the big clam order and it got dipped last night so its been here a couple weeks.

the strange thing is that this clam was not the one I was trying to treat - it looked better before the FW dip. The ones that made it do look better than they did before the dip.

I should also mention that I had a small salinity swing while I was gone (forgot to turn on the topoff so I lost 3 days evap which isn't much). Then I changed the light to a 250W 6.5K bulb. I just installed the 15k bulb now so there have been some other things going on which I guess could have weakened it.

[YiNYaNg]

Could of been a number of things then since you said that or it could of been sick with little to no signs from the day it was shipped and needed a FWD sooner to save it. Did it attach to anything or did you leave it on the sand bed?

[hypertech]

It had jumped off a couple times but it looked great prior to putting it in the dip.

It must have been weak or had something wrong with it and the shock was just too much.

I'm going to go test my nitrates now.

[David Grigor]

That's the bad thing about clams. Like a light switch it's either deal or alive. Rarely is there any warning signs that it's not getting enough nutirition until gone.

[Taklu]

Dunno...if urs is dead or not.... but a dead clam creates one hell of a stink :eek4:

Mine recessed & simply fell off into the shell...when I picked it up finally in the hope that it maybe alive..it simply let go & sloshed out of the shell with a super stink... flushed it in a jiffy.

[spsick]

at least it was a $20 clam and not the normal price tag of 80+ right?

[hypertech]

yep, it stinks and it was $20. He going out right now - all the way to the bin. Ugggh - it smells AWFUL.

[hypoxia]

I had a clam die once. Just a little tiny turkeywing, nothing fancy like yours, but that is the only smell that has ever caused me to lose my cookies. Yow.

[RogersCG]

Really sorry to hear you lost him....

How are the others doing?

[capman]

That's the bad thing about clams. Like a light switch it's either deal or alive. Rarely is there any warning signs that it's not getting enough nutirition until gone.

Sometimes this is how it is, but I think there are lots of cases where there are clues at least weeks in advance. I have come to the conclusion (the hard way) that a lot of clam deaths are preceeded by a period (of weeks or months) with no shell growth. If there is not a nice white edge of new shell being laid down something is wrong, and if the problem is not fixed soon enough the living tissue eventually starts to shrink, the incurrent siphon starts to gape a bit (as a result of having too small an animal in a shell the right size for a larger one, and as a result of weakness that causes difficulty in keeping the shells closed to their normal position), and then it is a really rapid decline after that. Once there is obvious tissue recession, gaping incurrent siphon, or anything like that, it seems it is too late to do anything about the problem. Deaths like this seem sudden, but in many cases I don't think they are.