Christy's Reef

Ok so today the clam is decidedly dead. I was giving out hope that it might recover but the exhalant siphon doesn't even have any shape to it, just a hole. The two halves of the shell are only being held together by the muscle and tissue. The exhalant siphon is completely flat and the tissue underneath has risen up to block it off, so theres nothing happening there. I suspect it has been like this for awhile as it looked like that late yesterday and today as well. Then again it is a large clam and I have no scavengers to clean it up. Damn. Anyway, I did a little necropsy on it and the byssal gland has a greenish hue to it and some pink as well. The rest of the clam looked pretty normal to me but who knows what was going on at a cellular level. I would have taken it in to work for histology but I think its been dead awhile and whatever info we could have gotten is long gone now (it was rather smelly).

As an aside for those of you who posted (wow people actually read this!). I have kept a close eye on those parameters I can measure for: pH, calcium, magnesium, alkalinity, strontium, iron, potassium and iodide, all have been within normal ranges. I routinely check my RO water and the TDS is always zero or one. I still think the cyano was from another product that I was dosing. Its not as bad today than it was earlier in the week so I think I'm finally getting a handle on things in the "nutrient" department. I did another 15G waterchange today and will probably do another later on in the week and hopefully things will get back to normal soon. Likely removing the dead clam was the first step on the road to recovery.

Sad....theres an awfully big space in the tank where it used to sit. :(