What killed our scallop?

[s10lowrider]

Picked up a flame scallop last night (price was right and we thought it would look neat). He was acting fine at the store, we brought him home and gently acclimated him and then added him to the tank. Last night it acted fine, opened and closed and seemed to be looking for a spot in the tank, even fed on some brine shrimp we added. We checked on the tank at noon today and he was dead. The water parameters are:
ph - 8.4
nitrite - 0
ammonia - 0
nitrate - 5
salinity - 1.023
temp - 80 degrees
His other tank mates are just a pair of clowns, a couple of damsels, cleaner shrimp, feather duster as well as your typical clean up crew of blue legs and maybe 3 snails. The only corals we have are two small fuzzy mushrooms, a fl ricordea, xenias, green star polyps. and some zoos (all of the corals are just small frags). Anyway everything else looks great and have been in the tank for a while, we do regular water changes and monitor water quality frequently. What could have killed this thing so fast? Did we just get a bad critter?

 

[cherylann]

Scallop's very rarely do well in tanks and they do not eat brine shrimp. They eat particulate matter, phytoplanton and such. It's possible that brine shrimp got caught in it's mantel and a hermit decided he wanted the brine shrimp, just a thought. I know they are very pretty but they just don't do well long term for most people. I have been tempted many times and would really like a throny oyster, but not to be.

 

[s10lowrider]

Would a crab that small (less than an inch) really be capable of doing damage to something so much bigger (the scallop was a little larger than the palm of my hand. We watched on and off for a few hours last night and the crabs seemed to want nothing to do with the scallop. If they even came near it it would slam closed and scare the crabs away. He didnt really look eaten or anything just seemed to be tucked back in the shell and dead of course. We probably should have been more clear on the food as well, it was just the frozen seafood cubes that we feed our fish which are disolved in water then injected with a syringe into the water so they are very very tiny particles.

 

[meowzer]

I tried a flame scallop once...it lasted about a month. I fed it marine snow, and some other liquid stuff thru a tube.....
As pretty as they are I would love to have one....but after reading about all the NON successes of other hobbyists....I think I'll leave them be

 

[scsinet]

Originally Posted by meowzer
http:///forum/post/3156850
I tried a flame scallop once...it lasted about a month. I fed it marine snow, and some other liquid stuff thru a tube.....
As pretty as they are I would love to have one....but after reading about all the NON successes of other hobbyists....I think I'll leave them be
+1
I'm the same way... never even tried one due to the track record. Given their beauty, it should be one of those things left in the ocean.

 

[bang guy]

IMO the Brine Shrimp could have clogged it's gills. It should have been able to eject the clog but it may not have recovered from moving around and was still too weak.

 

[s10lowrider]

We might not be making ourselves clear the brine shrimp were injected into the water not his mouth they were extremely tiny you can hardly see them in the water and he was moving around long after the brine shrimp were in the water.

 

[ophiura]

Your specific gravity, IMO, is stressfully low for a lot of inverts...how do you measure it?
Can you explain what "gentle acclimation" means?

 

[salami trigger]

I tried them several times over the years...never lasted more than a couple of months.

 

[ophiura]

They are generally doomed in our tanks.
But it is a reasonable question why it died quite so fast. For that we tend to look at acclimation shock. Things like hydrometers can be off significantly (mine is high .02). If a similar case, a merely "stressful" 1.023 could be a basically fatal 1.021.
Having said that, I do not ever recommend another.

 

[s10lowrider]

It was dripped for 3 hours as recommended as well as floated during the process to adjust to the temp. Right now we have a cheesy hydrometer which we have heard can be in accurate but everything else in the tank is great and has been for quite a while including all of our inverts. At the moment we dont have an extra $100 to drop on a refractometer so every now and then we have our LFS test the water and it always checks out fine. How high of a salinity is recommended to keep everything happy? Given the research and knowledge we now have of them we probably wont buy another, just thought we were doing it a favor by putting it in a much nicer environment than the tiny display tanks at the fish store.

 

[scsinet]

1.025-1.026 is what the target should be for a tank with inverts.
Although your existing inverts are doing fine, if that salinity drifted from a healthy 1.025 to 1.023 over a period of weeks or months, the inverts would have had time to adjust (albeit stressfully). They may be doing fine, but they had a heckuv a lot longer to adjust to that than your scallop did, if the system was at 1.025 when those resident inverts were first introduced. Plus, even if it wasn't, it depends on the invert. Some are more sensitive than others.
3 hours of acclimation is insufficient for an invert like a scallop to adjust to a 0.002 drop in salinity. In fact, the time required for an sensitive invert like a scallop, clam, anemone, star, etc to adjust to such a drop is an impractically long time table for the acclimation process.
While you don't have $100 to spend on a refractometer (which actually can be had for more like $40-50), how much did you just lose by killing a scallop which may well have been due to the lack of said instrument? I'd strongly advise saving for the proper instrument.

 

[bang guy]

Originally Posted by s10lowrider
http:///forum/post/3157103
We might not be making ourselves clear the brine shrimp were injected into the water not his mouth they were extremely tiny you can hardly see them in the water and he was moving around long after the brine shrimp were in the water.
You are right, I misunderstood. Adding Artimia Nauplii to the water could not have harmed your File Clam.
All I can think of is that it was already on it's way out and the stress of moving it finished the job.

 

[spanko]

Originally Posted by SCSInet
While you don't have $100 to spend on a refractometer (which actually can be had for more like $40-50), how much did you just lose by killing a scallop which may well have been due to the lack of said instrument? I'd strongly advise saving for the proper instrument.
Well said!

 

[ophiura]

Originally Posted by s10lowrider
http:///forum/post/3157495
It was dripped for 3 hours as recommended as well as floated during the process to adjust to the temp. Right now we have a cheesy hydrometer which we have heard can be in accurate but everything else in the tank is great and has been for quite a while including all of our inverts. At the moment we dont have an extra $100 to drop on a refractometer so every now and then we have our LFS test the water and it always checks out fine. How high of a salinity is recommended to keep everything happy? Given the research and knowledge we now have of them we probably wont buy another, just thought we were doing it a favor by putting it in a much nicer environment than the tiny display tanks at the fish store.
My LFS would freak out if I had them test my water at and it was 1.025-1.026 (reef salinity). They think "perfect' is 1.021 which is standard for fish only tanks. Then again, they don't keep much coral growing in their display tanks for long.
A sign of a good LFS to me is one with display tanks with good coral growth and hard or SPS corals. These take a little more nuanced work to get growing as opposed to shrooms or something. So I am suspicious if I don't see a good hard coral display. They may not have it down quite right as to what is perfect in water quality. I just say don't test my salinity...

Refractometers are coming down in price. You can typically pick one up for $40 or so, and it really is the way to go if you want inverts, IMO. Or if you are in a bigger town, find a reef club. Sadly many are getting out of the hobby and unloading their supplies for cheap.

 

[lastchoice]

I have had mine for about 6 weeks now. I feel bad because the LFS guy told me they were easy to take care of. If I knew they die so easy I would not of got them, but so far so good.
Does anyone know how long they live in the wild? I thought I read 1 year, but I am not sure if that was just the longest they can live in the home aquarium or the wild.
I target feed mine Kent micro-vert, chromaplex, zooplex and so on with a syringe. I do one of these foods a day for variety. I am not sure if lighting is a factor, but I have 10k MH and atinic lights.
As far as hydro meters. YES!!! they are a big problem. I found this out the hard way. Mine is always off by .04, so my salt got over 1.030 and killed most of my fish. You can find a refracto for about $40 or you can lose more than $40 worth of fish like I did. I would at least get your hydor meter tested by a refracto. Mine is always 0.04 low, knowing that I can use it.

 

[lastchoice]

Also, I think stress will kill these guys easy. I agree they do not eat brine at all. Needs to be filter feeder food and I heard marine snow is worthless. Kent as worked for me target feeding.
They like to find a cave or wedge themselves between some rocks and almost never move, swim around or open and close. If they never settled down maybe they could not find a place they liked and it stressed them to death.

 

[bang guy]

Can an animal with no brain feel stress?

 

[lastchoice]

Do they really have no brains?
I don't think these guys are that dumb. I only seen them move 3 times in 6 weeks. One of them moved out of its crevice between a rock and the glass into the middle of the tank, sat there for a few mins then swam backwards over the same place it came from and dropped exactly where it was b4. I still don't know how the heck it knew where it was going. It was kind of like doing a perfect parallel parking job with you eyes closed. Strange little things.
Even if they don't have brains I think will die if they can't find a quiet place to sit and collect food. It is not eating while it is being chased around the tank and it is not eating if something is bothering it so it can't open up.
That is my 2 cents. I don't think much is known about these things. I could not find too much with google.

 

[jc germ]

i have had my flame scallop for almost 2 years now and no problems yet i dont target feed it or give it much attention at all and it looks great

it hardly ever moves out of its spot under the rocks guess im just lucky then this is my scallop