dead clam / oyester

[old dirty picasso]

tank has been up and running for 3 months.
we bought a porc. puffer and picasso trigger
also a large live rock. [fiji reef i think]

the puffer ended up having white spot [the store was iffy but fell in love w/ puffer/ never shopping there in future / jerk even used a net...}

[most likely saltwater ich]

the trigger also ended up getting it.
[he rubbed against the rock alot, scratching]

the ick began to spread. so after reading everything available to me
and speaking with various stores around. [finally have found a great local shop]we bought reef safe medication, droped to hypo salinity, i gave a few succsesful f.w. dips to puffer. we took our carbon filters out.

it wasn't working...

i had to go copper/ formaldahide [organi cure ]

so i had to put my beautiful live rock in a diffrent tank.

[since we got it we discovered the clam or oyester on it
and it quickly became my favorite part of the tank.
the mystery alone provided hours of enjoyment and article searching gallore]

while treating fish tank i did best to moniter [reef] tank
the change was quick the clam wouldn't open anymore
and these arms came out of the rock
i thought it was worms , now i think it waspart of this creature/ clam

a few other changes i noticed:
the anenemone arms [very little ones] stopped coming out
this white cyliderical thing with like teeth poped out the rock
and a few even smaller ones did too
the next day i noticed they shriveled and the arms were gone
white "stuff" popped up where they were. looked like wool or mold almost
then later that day the white stuff sufaced on the edge of the clams things opening [fungus i suppose?]

some bright green algae has sprouted on the live rock and where the white stuff was is turning into the red algae . i think it is good algae, but i'm not sure.

so i decided to do a water change on the reef tank after doing one on the fish tank.the next day

i was pouring in the water andthe clam looked lose.
i picked it up off the rock . it was dead.
the shell came up and ther is a piece of flesh
on the rock it looks like a fan almost and it seems stuck to the rock
but i haven't tried to move it yet...

i don't know what to do about this
i want to clean it and put the rock back in fish tank
but don't want it to taint my tank
can this happen?

as far as the ich goes

after we waited the amount of time for reef safe meds to disipate
from the water we used orgni cure like prev. mention
i do 25 to 50 % water changes every two days/ then add recommended dose
[i don't have a copper test kit so i do that to help insure not overdosing the fish]
they are doing alot better

i am having trouble keeping nitrates at 0
we have a 55 gallon tank
both fish are small 3 inches long max
and we are going to get a much larger tank in future

the fishes appetite is also wanning... could be copper sensetivity


well thanks in advance to anyone who can point me in the right direction

we love our fish and want them to be happy

[cocoa_pleco]

could be sensitivity. I had saltwater, and IT WAS A BITC*

My purple starfish was my first critter, and he got some GROSS disease where he got a huge blister in his head and I could see inside his head.

Then my anenome was weird, so i transefered him to his own tank, and he stung me.

As for your fish, i know some fish are sensitive 2 copper

[cocoa_pleco]

sorry about the dead clams

[old dirty picasso]

hole in head disease is too gross, sorry bout that!

well here's the update
so i cleaned the live rock and through out the clam
and have moved on.
i stopped treatmeant of copper in
my fish only tank and my fish have gotten 100%
better!
i fed them a cray fish and a few feeder guppies since they
have gotten their appetites back! wow, they love those!
and the porc puffer is eating flakes even now! [picky eater, loves raw meat]

i have gotten my water levels back to normal
nitrite 0
ammon 0
nitrate o
ph 7.8 -8.2 [i use small amounts of baking soda to keep at 8.2 when it drops]
and am working on raising my s.g. back to 1.024 ,slowly [was in hypo salinity]
water changes saved my fish and paying attention to they're behavior
my trigger was laying around not eating and his equallibrium was
f-ed up ! so i layed a few shrimp pellets right by him [only thing heavy enough to stay anchored near him] and he ate them.
i also added carbon filters back
to get rid of copper.
i 'm going to keep it a fish only tank
and make the other a reef tank
so i can get a few clowns.

well bye for now