Flame Scallops

[Grouper954]

Hey everybody! :mrgreen:

I haven't logged on in awhile, due to school and work and the day-to-day bs that we're all too familiar with. But I've finally had some time to work on my tank! And last night while I was browsing Facebook, I saw a post by my buddy who was offering up two red flame scallops for free to whoever wanted to come pick them up. I happily obliged, and did so immediately. These guys are my very first tank residents.

This one is about 3 1/2" and is kind of long shaped, rather than the shape of a traditional scallop. His tentacles seem a bit droopy and lame (which makes me question his health)


And here is the smaller, less active one. His tentacles are beautiful but he's not in hiding and has barely moved in the past 14 hours or so.



So after doing a bit of research I've discovered that this species tends to do very poorly in aquariums. I've decided to give one away to a close friend of mine, in order to lessen the biological load & provide more food for each clam. My question is, have anybody on here kept these with success? Are there any phytoplankton/bacterioplankton additives that might be helpful?

Thanks in advance.

-Grouper

 

[bjohanson1234]

I have tried them, they are awesome looking creatures, but IMO better left in the ocean.

The amount of food they require will quickly degrade the water quality in a tank. Especially a new tank that isnt very well established.

You can try something like DTs phytoplankton. Thats what I tried using, but unfortunatley, my flame scallop didn't last. I hope you have better success than I did.

 

[little_fish]

Both of yours look pretty near dead already, the pale color and limp mantel are what tells me this. I dont think there is much chance of them being saved at this point.

 

[Smitty]

Good luck with them...they don't seem to last long. I've kept one for about 4 months before.

 

[Grouper954]

Here are some better pictures of the one I decided to keep.

Little Fish, do you still think it's dying? :(

 

[little_fish]

Yep, he should have a much darker red mantle than that.

 

[Grouper954]

:((( Anything I can do to try and bring him back or is it too late?

P.S. you should get paid for the amount of help you provide; seriously.

 

[little_fish]

well, if you are serious about trying here are the best ideas I can think of

I would get a small bucket and put in a small powerhead and put in the smallest sized phytoplankton or any other coral food you can find. I would dose the bucket quite heavily several times a day. This is going to wreck havoc on the water quality, so you are going to need to do multiple small water changes a day.

Try and find your own live phytoplankton, rotifer culture or some other tiny tiny tiny organism to feed it on. A gut analysis of wild caught scallops showed that they were eating invert larva. Same procedure as above.

The problem with these guys is that they only the smallest particles of food, most of the coral food on the market is made up of particulates that are too large for them.

And you can always donate to my vet school fund! But really I get more satisfaction out educating people so that they can be smart, responsible reefers and not cause any more damage to our ocean than we already put on it.

 

[Bifferwine]

The only person I know of that has been able to keep one successfully (for more than a couple months) is D2mini. And his lone scallop survivor was one of three or four that he started with, if I remember correctly. It is a shame that they are so pretty. If they were ugly, no one would bother to pull them out of the ocean for our tanks!