Well it finally happened - full tank wipeout

[jmaneyapanda]

kappaknight wrote: Interesting... I had a couple of clam deaths a looooong time ago and at the time, I had some bumblebee snails. (Maybe like 6). The clam was about 4-5 inches and as it was dying, I noticed all the bumblebee snails gathered on what's left of the mantle and finished it within a couple of days. (At first I thought they were killed by the snails... but I don't think they did.)

Yeah, unfortunately a comman mistake- blame the clean up crew. When that's what they're getting paid for.

Clams have a lot of meat to them, and when they die, they go out quick. Imagine a fish the size of a clam dying and decomposing in the tank. Now that's a bioload!

 

[george]

jmaneyapanda wrote: Clams have a lot of meat to them, and when they die, they go out quick. Imagine a fish the size of a clam dying and decomposing in the tank. Now that's a bioload!

Well, you'd also have to consider if fish that had all its internal organs relatively wide open to the tank. I think that's a huge contributor. Fish have coatings, scales, and are basically encased in protein muscle. That gives the cleanup crew plenty of time to hack away at it before it goes really rancid. Shellfish on the other hand are basically a shell which falls open, muscles and intestines/lungs/etc which are the major sources of toxic pollutants.

I've never pulled a fish of any size out of an aquarium that smelled nearly as bad as one dead snail or clam.