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Innovative Marine Aquariums

A FAQ on Clams


Urchinhead

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Q: I noticed that the article lists Vermetidae snails and Bristle worms under parasites. Aren't those all over every reef tank? How do they hurt the clam?

 

A: Bristle worms, can be in every tank but not always. Vermietidae are usually as well. The bristles can hurt the clam by burrowing in under the foot area for shelter and sting the clam. The snails should be pyramid not Vermetidae snails. That said Vermetidae can be a real problem for the tank overall including and up to shutting down your pumps so get rid of them if you can.

 

Q: (Really a statement) I notice you have the Maximas max size down as 6" when they can actually reach 12". The only giant clam that stays at or around 6" is the Crocea.

 

A: Correct. I can't edit this so I can't change it without repost.

 

Q: Can Maxima clams thrive under led lighting? I have 2 18 diode strips one 10k one 460nm. I think 20 watt fixture isthat sufficient?

 

A: Depends. How much PAR will hit the clam? And what size is the tank? Every clam is different as is every tank. The lighting spectrum is fine it will all come down to where you put the clam and the clam itself. If you have SPS put the clam close to the same level/location of the SPS but make sure to light acclimate the clam regardless because LED light can be very powerful.

 

Q: I've got a 20H with 2 BoostLED Par30s over it (considering a 3rd). Is this enough for a Crocea?

 

A: Again it depends. It all comes down to PAR and the clam itself. In general I would say yes. But see my previous answer for more detail.

Edited by Urchinhead
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  • 2 months later...

This seems like the perfect thread to ask and you seem to be the perfect guy to help with my question.

 

Will a 150watt MH combo fixture with 20k geissmen chrome bulb and 2 24" geissmen actinic t5ho's be sufficient for a Crocea clam in a 45g cube being 24" high placed 12" from the top on rockwork.

 

 

also is there a sweet spot for the salinity it does best in? ive kept my previouse at 1.25 and was just curiouse if it mattered enough to question.

 

 

 

well done on the other info tho and love having it in one thread!

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91Atrac-

 

Thank you. Your clam should be fine with that light.

 

However it will let you know if its not by falling over/off of where you put it. It could be falling for several reasons. 1) a fish startled it and it rapidly closed forcing water out and knocking itself over; 2) it doesn't like the light strength/weakness 3) it doesn't like the flow because its too much. I am sure there are others but those would be the top three that come to mind.

 

A sign of too much flow would be that the clam is getting its mantle blown up and it isn't furling around the shell or it isn't fully extending its mantle. Sign of too little light would be that its stretching its mantle up towards the light like its reaching for something.

 

As to salinity... 1.25 should be ok. Just make sure to drip acclimate the clam to your water over about 30-45 minutes.

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91Atrac-

 

Thank you. Your clam should be fine with that light.

 

However it will let you know if its not by falling over/off of where you put it. It could be falling for several reasons. 1) a fish startled it and it rapidly closed forcing water out and knocking itself over; 2) it doesn't like the light strength/weakness 3) it doesn't like the flow because its too much. I am sure there are others but those would be the top three that come to mind.

 

A sign of too much flow would be that the clam is getting its mantle blown up and it isn't furling around the shell or it isn't fully extending its mantle. Sign of too little light would be that its stretching its mantle up towards the light like its reaching for something.

 

As to salinity... 1.25 should be ok. Just make sure to drip acclimate the clam to your water over about 30-45 minutes.

 

 

Thanks for the tips and info. my tank wont be near running for a couple months but being prepared for my plans on this build is what im focusing on for everything and this clam will be placed in the center of the tank. ill be running the hydor wavemaker2 for flow and they will be oneach side of the back glass facing forward or one up forward and the other just straight a couple inchs from the sand.

 

But this will be the main eye sore in the tank and want it to be perfect.

 

how about temp and additives? as well with it being a filter feeder and a photo feeder hand feeding can be done correct? and would this be done by slowly squeezing food into its mouth or opening?

 

sorry if its a thread jack

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Thanks for the tips and info. my tank wont be near running for a couple months but being prepared for my plans on this build is what im focusing on for everything and this clam will be placed in the center of the tank. ill be running the hydor wavemaker2 for flow and they will be oneach side of the back glass facing forward or one up forward and the other just straight a couple inchs from the sand.

 

If you haven't bought those wave makers yet then I would advise you not to. You have a cube and its very hard to generate any size wave in a cube shape. Waveform needs a long narrow shape with the rule of thumb being the length to be twice the width in order to make a wave. A couple of MP10's would probably be a better choice. Alternately you could go with a Tunze 6055 or two. They are controllable also and on par with the MP10 but quite a bit less noisy.

 

But this will be the main eye sore in the tank and want it to be perfect.

 

All the more reason not to put them in.

 

how about temp and additives? as well with it being a filter feeder and a photo feeder hand feeding can be done correct? and would this be done by slowly squeezing food into its mouth or opening?

 

sorry if its a thread jack

 

Not a thread jack. This is what the thread is for.

 

Temp should be between 77 and 81.

 

You do not need to add any food suppliments that you would normally find in the stores. They just won't process them. They take in "food" in the 50 micron size range which is very little. And you should absolutely not try to spot feed them!

 

Actually what you can do is feed your fish a very little bit more. Clams actually take up nitrates and phosphates as nutrition so they make good additions to your filtration system. The rest of their nutritional needs will be met by your light.

 

You will need to keep a close eye on your calcium and calcium carbonate (Alkalinity) because these animals are like corals in that they grow by growing their shell and when they go into a growth mode they can rapidly deplete a small tank like yours of Ca and CaCO3. I had a 14" Derasa that had me dumping over 100 ml of both into the tank daily on top of the 60 I was adding for SPS just to keep up with its needs. Were I you I would test 2-3 times a week for both and use a two part dosing solution like B-Ionic or the stuff from Bulk Reef Supply (much cheaper) to keep your Ca at 420+ and your dKH between 8 and 10.

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  • 1 month later...

I posted this in another thread in regards to GFO effecting clams because of the iron content and its relation to pinched mantle. Figured its pertinent clam info and should be posted here. So here it is.

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/12919819/

 

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=...z9SmCo_Xyqe78-A

 

GFO if not properly fed oxygenated water from the skimmer outlet or similar can cause a low oxygen environment. No oxygen and the iron - phosphate binds will break resulting in free iron²,³(yes ferric oxide comes in both iron 2&3). In short non oxygenated Ferric oxide will break down to Iron which is binded by DFO(Desferrioxamine) which is what inhibits growth in protozoa perkinsus by stealing the iron from the cell. Desferrioxamine is naturally occurring iron chelator produced by marine bacterium. DFO also prevents peroxynitrous and peroxynitric acid from forming from NO3 and free hydrogen ions in our high pH solution we call saltwater. Anyway, When you have the added amount of iron the naturally occurring DFO isn't enough to bind all the iron.

 

At the slow flow rate that we set our reactors. Typically if you were to test the water inside the reactor its or ORP will be low basically low oxygen environment. All this compounded can lead to readily available iron to the protozoa. Hence the reason behind some people having problems with clams when running GFO because DFO can't keep up and bind all the iron. Along with an initial stressor.

 

Basically running a ferric oxide in a reactor is a blessing and a curse.

 

When you bring it to the level of the clam. Iron and Desferrioxamine are always present right? So why doesn't everyone get pinched mantle? The naturally occurring DFO is enough to bind the iron from the protozoa cell to keep population in check in conjunction with the clams immune system. What happens if you mess with the clams immune system and have more iron?

 

Well when you first add fresh gfo some iron is leachd and also phates are bound quickly which can stress the clam causing its immune system to be susceptible to the protozoa that will then be able thriving off of the iron. Because of the iron content in the water exceeding the usability of corals, macro and all other life in the aquaria. The DFOs threshold can be peaked leaving an excess of free iron.

 

Also note when doing your regular water changes your also adding iron. But water changes should match the system inducing no stress to the clam, making it unsusceptible to the protozoa that it is always keeping at bay via DFO and its Immune systems.

 

Ways to avoid this?

-Dont buy a clam lol jk

-dont run gfo when introducing a new clam.

- wait till the day before your normal water change and add the clam so the tank is low on iron. Then wait a week for it to adjust/get comfy so there won't be an iron introduction while its stressed/acclimating.

- start with small doses of gfo and work up every time you change it - and never shoot for zero or a rapid change

Edited by Deckoz2302
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  • 3 months later...

Are there any threads on exactly how much calcium clams use?

Like something like this:

4" Crocea uses 20ml calcium each day

10" maxima uses 80ml calcium each day

And so on and so forth.

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I have never seen such a thread or any documentation of the sort. There are to manhy variables to I think accurately say X amount of calcium per X number of inches of clam. They speed and slow their growth just like humans go through growth spurts up to adulthood.

 

If I am wrong please link to the article as I and many others I think would find this extremely interesting.

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You would probably do best to delete that last post. I forgot all about water volume, live rock volume, etc.

Someone should do a study on that.

Edited by asid61
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Are there any threads on exactly how much calcium clams use?

Like something like this:

4" Crocea uses 20ml calcium each day

10" maxima uses 80ml calcium each day

And so on and so forth.

 

Hi Asid-

 

There really isn't. Just like any other animal a clam will go through growth spurts and periods of low to no growth. So the total uptake of Ca and CaCO3 will be variable based on growth of the clam. Generally the larger the clam the more Ca and CaCO3 it uses and thus more Ca etc you will be needing to add to the tank. This is why it's important to test regularly and dose as needed to maintain about 420-450.

 

I would suggest that when you first put a clam in, regardless of size, you test every day to every other day and dose accordingly to keep your Ca between the levels mentioned above. Do this for about 2-3 weeks. This will give your clam time to adapt to its new home and start a growth cycle. After that test 2-3 times per week and again aim for those levels. Keep an eye on your dKH as well since you don't want it to drop below 8 and ideally sit at between 8-10.

 

Some weeks you will find A LOT of Ca going out. This is usually because something in there is growing. Could be the clam could be another stoney coral but it's a sign of growth. Other weeks not so much so do keep an eye on it.

 

As an example my 14+" Derasa would use up close to 100 ml of Ca per day by itself and it wasn't a fast grower. It was just big and to add a little bit of shell took A LOT of Ca and CaCO3! :) Some of the smaller one's I had (3-5") could account for up to 20 ml a day depending on where they were on their growth curve.

 

But remember a clam that is taking up a lot of (relative to it's size) Ca and CaCO3 is a growing clam which is a happy clam!

Edited by Urchinhead
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20 ml a day! For a 5in clam!?

My god... I am going to maybe rethink this.

If you still have some of those clams, can you try putting them in a clean 5g or 10g system, with no other livestock, just it and some LR, and see how it does? Maybe we could come up with a more accurate measure.

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At this point I can't because I have no tank operational. There is a 120 gallon in the garage that I am plumbing and a 25 gallon frag farm that I have standing by to use as a QT tank as stuff comes in when the main tank goes live but I don't have the time right now to take care of a tank or do this kind of experiment.

 

And I don't think it's going to be something that can be easily tested and then applied across all clams because the sample would be too small with just one clam. We would need a much more diverse and much larger sample and each clam would have to be in its own tank and isolated from all other tanks.

 

And when I say more I mean (off the top of my head) like over 100+ and more likely on the order of 500+ to be able to generalize it even a little bit.

 

The problem is that each clam, like each coral or fish etc will behave along certain species lines and with certain shared traits but is still an individual organism with unique characteristics that makes this kind of generalization hard to do.

 

In my case my clams grew quickly so I would use up quite a bit of Ca etc. Same with my SPS and other corals. If you go back through my tank thread you will see the growth in a relatively short time. I was lucky that way.

 

Do not take my personal experience as a detriment to getting a clam. And realize that if you have the lighting for a Maxima or Crocea you also have the lighting for SPS so 20 mg of two part isn't going to be all that much if your SPS and clam are both happy and healthy. It could end up as much as 40 mg. But remember if you use the Bulk Reef Supply (which is good stuff) it's pretty darn cheap and that isn't much dosing.

 

Just break it down into two or more times per day and be careful where you put it in the tank so you don't cause what I call a "base burn". What I mean by that is when you drop a dose into the tank you are creating a zone within the water column of a very high (base) pH. On the order of 12 pH. Reason being is you dropped a substance into the tank that is natively high pH. That high of a pH level can cause a burn similar to what a low pH (acid) substance would. If that zone of water hits a animal/coral/invert it can cause a chemical burn and hurt the animal.

 

Think chlorine bleach fumes hitting your lungs or chlorine from a pool hitting them as an analog except you would be breathing in a cloud of it instead of the diluted fumes. This would send you right to the hospital.

 

So the idea is to pour it in gradually in a high flow area where it dilutes quickly and mixes with the water. You do it twice or more per day because 10 mg twice a day causes less of a swing in pH than 20mg once per day as an example.

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Can you just add cal into your top-off water?

 

You can but it's not recommended because you need to balance your dosing and the amount of top off may vary depending on a lot of variables. Better to do a two part of use a Ca reactor if your tank is big enough to justify it.

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  • 1 year later...
SantaMonica

Here is a clam-mounting trick: Use reef putty, and work the clam (the hinge) into it when soft, then remove. When the putty hardens, put the clam back on it and it will fit his hinge perfectly and he won't fall over (unless he wants to).

  • Like 1
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  • 2 months later...
SquishyFishy

My LFS has a maxima baby for 75$ he's about 2 inches long. I take it this seems to be a decent price, should I buy him?

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