do i have an oyster and didnt know it??

[salt creepette]

my husband was looking at the tank the other night and he spotted a weird thing. the rock that my frilly mushrooms are on appears to be not a rock, but some kind of clam or something. it has a crack that closes when you touch the rock and when its open you can look inside and see a 'tongue.' anyone know what this is? clam, oyster, mussel?

[salt creepette]

.

[Pez Vela]

Hard to tell but it is some kind of bivalve. Looks to me like a tropical oyster as you said.

my 2¢

Mike

[salt creepette]

well i came home tonight and my little yellow clown goby (my third attempt at keeping this fish) had his head stuck in the bivalve and got squished to death. it looked like it just happened. im not sure what to think, should i keep this thing in the tank or what? I am majorly bummed.

[Cosine]

Are any of your other fish small enough to be in danger from this thing?

[OodleyBoodely]

I think it was an accidental death. Maybe your goby tried to sit on the edge of the open shell and triggered the oyster to snap shut. I've noticed that my clown gobies and even more so the yellows before they died, are not very cautious about where and what they perch on.

[salt creepette]

my other fish are larger, but i hope a shrimp or whatever doesnt fall to the same fate. i will decide what to do with the clam later when I am no longer mad about my clown goby.

[Jeremiah]

I have a bunch of those things in my tank, they like to hang out on the underside of rocks. I put on in a little glass o' water one day to check it out and it was able to move around like a snail. (couldn't climb up walls though) I noticed that when I shine light on them they close up real fast. Pretty neat I think...

Jeremiah

[SPC]

Originally Posted by salt creepette

well i came home tonight and my little yellow clown goby (my third attempt at keeping this fish) had his head stuck in the bivalve and got squished to death. it looked like it just happened. im not sure what to think, should i keep this thing in the tank or what? I am majorly bummed.

Sorry to here about the goby, salt creepette, I will have to say this is the first I have ever heard of this type of thing happening. I would imagine that bivalves are a part of every natural environment that our fish come from, and therefore would think that they would know to be cautious of them (the same reason that anemones don't eat all of our animals). I wonder if the goby could have been startled by something and just turned and headed into the oyster by accident?

FWIW, I have had many of these bivalves in my tank over the years but have never seen this happen. If it were me I would just chalk it up to bad luck and not worry about it happening again.
Steve

[salt creepette]

i hope its just a fluke. this thing is big, probably 4 to 5 inches square. its funny cuz it isnt shaped like a clam. its very abstract and the only way you know is if its open and you can see inside it. i wonder if it will get bigger. i wonder if it is less photosynthetic than the other prettier clams since the mantle is creamy white and it is situated sideways and is covered in mushrooms. i wonder, i wonder.

[rayjay]

Here is mine.