Flame Scallop / Xenia Not Doing So Hot

[Ween]

After 3 weeks at apparent happiness (mouth wide open), my flame scallop moved and now his red "skin" is becoming unattached from the shell. I can only assume he is dying. My Xenia is also not doing too well the past 2 days. It has taken a more shrunken down appearance. I have checked all my levels, everything is fine. I did a water change about 4 days ago, I made absolutely sure that the water was the same salinity and temperature. What did happen to me about a week ago though is the pump in my HOB gave out. I had the heater in the HOB. Therefore, none of the heated water went from my HOB into the aquarium and the temperature dropped to about 72F. I immediately went and bought a nice heater and hid it in the tank behind the rock. I also replaced the HOB. The temperature gradually increased over the course of about 4 days to a nice cozy 82F. Did it take this long for the effects to show? My star polyps and button polyps appear to be fine. So do all my invertibrates. Every other creature in the tank (nudibranches (being ovverrun, see my other post), little roly poly looking things (some sort of "pod", dont remember the name), all other tiny corals, the brittle star, the probably 10 white brittle stars I have that were hitchikers in one rock (about the size of a dime at biggest), calupera, a little hair algea ). I cannot figure out what is happening. Is the temperature problem to blame, is the scallop putting of poisons as it does, is the xenia putting off poisons as it dies, are they 5 billion nudibranches poisoning the water? Anyone with any help, please let me know.

Stephen

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Stephen,

Welcome to Reefs.org!


First, let me say that my knowledge is limited with some of what you have. Flame Scallops have a poor track record in tanks. They require specialized feeding and almost always die. (You may not have been aware of that fact. The LFS doesn't always give good information when a customer makes a purchase.) Usually slowly. But they can look good until it's too late. There should be a rise in ammonia once it starts decomposing and that is bad for the tank, of course. The temp change may not have been a good thing either.

Hopefully someone else will chime in with more on-hands experience. Just a matter of time. Until then, there is a wealth of information that can be searched here. Lot's of links. Just don't get discouraged if you don't always get a quick answer to a question.