Squamosa clam stopped opening

[Court_Appointed_Hypeman]

My source water is good. 0 TDS with double resin chambers and dual membranes. I replace the resin around every 2 weeks.

Now that I think about it, I maybe overdosing trace elements. I’m keeping Goniopora as my main coral which I’ve read everywhere need/like iron. Plus I have a good size refugium with chaetomorpha.

But the gonis haven’t been that happy either, probably my fluctuating nitrate/phosphates.
I have a bio pellet reactor that I think has been lowering the nitrates the past month.

I don’t run any filter floss, partially because I want to organics in the water column for coral. Basically how the tritan method does it, no particulate filter and let it hit the algae bed. Clean/rotate algae regularly.
Plus it’s a huge pain to reach my filter sock chamber now with my ATO directly above it.
I may have to start using them again though.
I have a reef octopus 200 skimmer that is pulling out tons of gunk a week.
I have been doing 2% daily auto changes everyday.

I’m going to pause the trace element and iron dosing for a good while and do some water changes this week.
Just did about a 20% change. I’ll do probably 2 more over the next few days. That will help lower my alkalinity, phosphates and nitrates more too.

Monitor your chaeto when stopping iron, once it starts to shrink will be a good indicator that your iron/traces bottomed out

 

[Macdaddynick1]

My source water is good. 0 TDS with double resin chambers and dual membranes. I replace the resin around every 2 weeks.

Now that I think about it, I maybe overdosing trace elements. I’m keeping Goniopora as my main coral which I’ve read everywhere need/like iron. Plus I have a good size refugium with chaetomorpha.

But the gonis haven’t been that happy either, probably my fluctuating nitrate/phosphates.
I have a bio pellet reactor that I think has been lowering the nitrates the past month.

I don’t run any filter floss, partially because I want to organics in the water column for coral. Basically how the tritan method does it, no particulate filter and let it hit the algae bed. Clean/rotate algae regularly.
Plus it’s a huge pain to reach my filter sock chamber now with my ATO directly above it.
I may have to start using them again though.
I have a reef octopus 200 skimmer that is pulling out tons of gunk a week.
I have been doing 2% daily auto changes everyday.

I’m going to pause the trace element and iron dosing for a good while and do some water changes this week.
Just did about a 20% change. I’ll do probably 2 more over the next few days. That will help lower my alkalinity, phosphates and nitrates more too.

I would definitely do that. In the next few weeks just do a bunch of waterchanges every few days, to reset your parameters in a way. I’ve done the same thing with iron and potassium dosing that’s why I thought about it. My algae exploded and corals declined substantially until I eventually started losing my stuff. Once I got back to basics stuff returned to normal.

 

[minus9]

I don't see any new growth at all, in fact, I see coralline growing where white shell should be, which tells me this clams hasn't been growing for some time. Sure water parameters could be funky, but my guess that other things would be suffering as well. Is the clam actually getting 500+ mm for at 8hrs a day? Is it blue heavy lighting? The two major factors that prevent clams from growing are lack of light and pests. A healthy clam that size should be putting on new shell growth rapidly and from the pics it doesn't look too big to me?

 

[LagoonReefLife]

I don't see any new growth at all, in fact, I see coralline growing where white shell should be, which tells me this clams hasn't been growing for some time. Sure water parameters could be funky, but my guess that other things would be suffering as well. Is the clam actually getting 500+ mm for at 8hrs a day? Is it blue heavy lighting? The two major factors that prevent clams from growing are lack of light and pests. A healthy clam that size should be putting on new shell growth rapidly and from the pics it doesn't look too big to me?

I measure the PAR in my tanks with an mq-510 par meter. I'm not sure if that's the ideal one for LED technology. I believe there maybe some accuracy differences depending on the sensor used and light source type.

When I first added macro algae under the light, a shaving brush too close to the center literally sizzled and died when the flow cut off. So I think the PAR has got to be up there.

I'm running a kessil a500x + 30 degree reflector, and 2 reef brite fillers on either side.
The blue setting is at 40%
Blue: 40
Intensity: 70
Purple: 70
Red: 15
Green: 15

 

[LagoonReefLife]

I've been able to get my phosphate and nitrate down quite a bit via water changes, Lanthanum based treatment for phosphate. I also cut way back on feeding my fish and all coral foods. I'll start slowly increasing the amount of food I put in to make sure they don't spike. I plan to run some carbon once I figure out how I'm going to fit it in my sump.

My levels have been this for the past few days
Nitrate: 9.8-10
Phosphate: 0.03
Alkalinity: 8.9

My water must have been too dirty, and definitely had too much iron + other trace elements in it.
The clam is looking extremely colorful, like wow what a difference. It's also back to opening up more, but not wide open. I think if I can keep my parameters stable here it should go back to normal.
I also cleaned all the algae off it's shell at the recommendation of PacificEastAquaculture. They said the algae growth will irritate the mantle once it reaches it.

 

[LagoonReefLife]

Just want to post an update that my Squamosa is doing great now that my water has been cleaned up. The algae has been dwindling as well. I moved it to the corner and it’s much happier not directly under the light. It’s started angling towards the center light/flow since.