clams
Contents:
- Giant clam got crab!
by tse/ra.nrl.navy.mil (Anthony Tse) (24 Jan 92)
- Trid. and Hip. Clams
by bbc/cs.rice.edu (Benjamin Chase) (8 May 92)
- help:clams being eaten
by tse/ra.nrl.navy.mil (Anthony Tse) (Tue, 6 Apr 1993)
- help:clams being eaten
by dbs/hprnd.rose.hp.com (Dave Sheehy) (6 Apr 1993)
- help:clams being eaten
by pschank/anagld.analytics.com (Paul Schanken) (7 Apr 93)
- more reef myth (clams)
by tse/ra.nrl.navy.mil (Anthony Tse) (Tue, 11 May 1993)
- [M][R] HELP! with sick Clams.....
by jamescho/leland.Stanford.EDU (James Cho) (Sat, 21 Aug 93)
by tse/ra.nrl.navy.mil (Anthony Tse)
Date: 24 Jan 92
Newsgroup: rec.aquaria
Hello,
My clam got crab! My favorite Crosea has not open up fully for
almost a week now. I checked for baby snails as describe in this month's
reef note and couldn't find anything, so I figure my cherub angel is
nipping at it more often then I think. I built a hospital box (one of them
plexi-glass box that you hang on the inside of your fish tank with slots
for water circulation) and put the clam in this morning. Guess what I
found when I got home from work today? A 1cm by .5cm crab inside the
hospital box! Must have lived INSIDE my clam and fed on it for a
while. So how do I find and get ride of these buggers? I have two
other giant clams and they seem to be doing just fine. BTW, I toss the
crab in my sump, is that a bad idea?
-Anthony
by bbc/cs.rice.edu (Benjamin Chase)
Date: 8 May 92
Newsgroup: rec.aquaria,alt.aquaria,sci.aquaria
[Hopefully, this post will go over better than my previous one, in
which I opined that a large front-to-back tank dimension would be
go unappreciated by the casual viewer. For those of you who were not
paying attention, I was widely shouted down. :-) ]
I've had a Tridacna clam, for just short of two years now. I don't
know what specie, it is, but it sounds similar to the T. derasa owned
by 'Lim --- the fish nut' ("...distinct wavy lines on the inside...
wavy lines looks green on one of them...").
My clam's mantle is beige-brown, with thin, wavy yellow-green lines
running longways through the beige-brown. Viewed from a shallow angle
(farther from perpendicular), the yellow-green color of the lines
changes towards purple; yes, it's a very unusual effect.
Mine also has spots on the very edge (ie. frill) of the mantle, though
I'd call mine closer to purple than blue. Okay, they're
blueish-purple. I'd assumed these were eyespots. (This assumption
made me wince all the more when I saw a fish nip at them -- "How about
a nice bite in the eye, Mr. Clam?" Ouch...)
Recently, my clam has shifted position*, so that the underside of its
mantle is in constant contact with the front glass of the tank. It
seems to be depositing shell unto the glass ("uh-oh"). Curiously, the
part of the mantle that is touching the glass is indeed the part that
would normally just be sticking far beyond the edge of the shell,
waving in open water. So, (conjecture time) the backside of the
mantle normally secretes shell, all over, but only manages to deposit
stuff when it's touching something? I haven't tried cleaning the
white stuff off the glass yet, so maybe it's just accumulated slime,
although it looks more like your classic lime buildup, but underwater.
Strangely, and maybe contrary to my conjecture that the mantle is
secreting the shell all over its backside, it seems like there's a
second mantle, which is sized to the shell, rather than protuding like
the more obvious mantle. If so, this smaller mantle would have to be
what's actually secreting the shell, since it's between the shell and
the bigger mantle. Of course, it could have just been some momentary
'clam strangeness'. Has anyone else seen this? Only a thin edge of
it is visible, and I am only able to see it where the bigger mantle is
against the glass (this lifts it up and away from the shell, so that I
can see the growing edge of the shell, and this apparent inner mantle
(actually, I guess it's actually "outer", that is, farther away from
the center of the clam, though it doesn't reach outward nearly as
far).
And finally, the moment you've been waiting for: my clam has more than
doubled in the (slightly less than) two years that I've had it. It's
bigger than fist-sized, certainly. Maybe 5" from end to end? Hard to
say, with refraction, and all. It's not as 'fat' as some of the other
species I've seen, though. (Maybe I'll size it more accurately the
next time I have to move it.)
*I have a thick (coral) gravel substrate ("eeeew, icky poo, he's got a
tank with _substrate_"). For the clam's well-being, I completely
buried a smallish rock in the gravel (I did say thick substrate,
didn't I?), and placed the clam above it. In short order, the clam
located the rock, and attached byssal threads to it. It seems quite
comfortable with this arrangement. At any rate, it has migrated
towards the front glass, partly from random shifting of things, and
partly because it blows gravel away from the 'glassward' end of the
clam when it closes violently. This creates a low spot in the gravel,
which the clam slowly sides into, and dragging the rock along with it,
I guess. Oops, time to redo the waterscape. I wonder how I can
persuade my clam to trade up to a larger rock?
--
Ben Chase <bbc-at-rice.edu>
by tse/ra.nrl.navy.mil (Anthony Tse)
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1993
Newsgroup: rec.aquaria
In article <4719-at-phred.UUCP> kathryn-at-phred.UUCP (kathryn power) writes:
>I recently bought 2 Crocea clams and someone is taking nibbles
>off them. I hear it might be Bristle worms, which I have seen
>in my tank. I don't think my fish are eating them, I only have
>gobis and a sailfin blenny and singapore blenny. This is an
>established reef (1 year) with live rock from Florida and
>Carribean. Any suggestions of what is eating my clams and how
>to catch it? Thanks
Things that will eat clams: cone shape baby snails, crabs,
and some worms. The first two are most likely. How to
get rid of them? The hard way, one by one, with a twizzer.
-Anthony
by dbs/hprnd.rose.hp.com (Dave Sheehy)
Date: 6 Apr 1993
Newsgroup: rec.aquaria
kathryn power (kathryn-at-phred.UUCP) wrote:
: I recently bought 2 Crocea clams and someone is taking nibbles
: off them. I hear it might be Bristle worms, which I have seen
: in my tank. I don't think my fish are eating them, I only have
: gobis and a sailfin blenny and singapore blenny. This is an
: established reef (1 year) with live rock from Florida and
: Carribean. Any suggestions of what is eating my clams and how
: to catch it? Thanks
When Scott Michael spoke at MACNA he claimed that some types of blennies will
pick on clams.
Dave Sheehy
by pschank/anagld.analytics.com (Paul Schanken)
Date: 7 Apr 93
Newsgroup: rec.aquaria
In my 90 gallon reef I had a orange tail blenny who loved to sit
on one of my large clams, and after a few weeks the edges of
the mantel looked frayed. I never saw him actually bite the
edges, but the clam stopped opening fully. After I removed
the blenny (after a month) the mantel healed and now 6 months
later the clam is in great shape! I believe bristle worms
bore into the clams shell and eat it from the inside out, but
have no first hand experience with damage caused by bristle
worms.
--- Paul
by tse/ra.nrl.navy.mil (Anthony Tse)
Date: Tue, 11 May 1993
Newsgroup: rec.aquaria
Hi folks,
It's time to stir things up again. Lots of people have been saying
one should collect clams with a piece of rock attached 'cause any
damage to their foot is deadly, well, I say cow pucky. If one collect
a clam with a BIG piece of rock attached AND handle both the clam and
the attached rock with extreme care during transport, that's probably ok.
(since the weight of a big piece of rock will likely pull the foot out
if not handled carefully, while it is not deadly if the clam is in
a healthy enviroment, it's probably not too good while it's under
stress during shipping). What I've been seeing a lot lately is people
are collecting clams with a tiny piece of rock attached, now not only
is that stupid, it's very dangerous to the clam. When a clam sense
danger, it close up AND retract it's foot mucsle, when the clam is
attached to a big piece of rock, it pull itself onto the piece of rock
tight as a defense mechanism, but when someone chip that big piece of
rock into a tiny pebble and the clam retract, it pull the pebble into
the clam shell, now that must not be the best thing one can do
to a clam. So you want to stop that right, by cutting the pebble loose
so the clam can regrow a foot and attach themselves onto a nice piece of
rock, well, good luck, cause as soon as you pick the clam up, it retract
and suck the pebble into it's shell, you are stuck. Two of the three
blue max I bought are attached to a pebble, while I was able to
cut one of the pebble loose, I can even get close to the second one.
We'll see how long that one live.
-Anthony
by jamescho/leland.Stanford.EDU (James Cho)
Date: Sat, 21 Aug 93
Newsgroup: sci.aquaria,rec.aquaria,alt.aquaria
recently i had a problem with one of my tridacnia clams. it was one that
i had for about 6 months now. it had a very purple mantle and it was
doing great before this.
i noticed that my clam had receded into it's shell. i had seen this
just prior to the death of clams before. i'm not sure what the cause
of this was. i suspect it could have been on of two things. for about
a week before this i had noticed one of these pesky aspisto(?) anemone
close (sometimes touching) to the clam. the other possibility was that
i noticed that there was an infestation of small (<5 mm) white snails.
before, when i saw snails i would pick them out with tweezers (~100
each time). But they seem to just come right back after about couple
weeks. maybe i should have added these to the breeder's registry :^(.
i hadn't picked them out for couple months so then had really accumul-
ated.
well this clam looked like it was on it's way out so i decided to go
for a pretty drastic measure. i grabbed the clam and allowed it to
close up. after this, i ran a fast jet of cold fresh water (sink) on
the edge of the shell where the snails were clustered. this removed
them very rapidly. i after a few minute of being back in it's home
it seemed to open up a little, so i knew that it wasn't dead. since
this technique worked so well at removing the snail, i did this same
procedure to my other two clams and they opened up almost immediately.
i also destroyed the few anemone which were near the clam.
it has been a couple weeks now and the clam that looked like
it was going to die looks much better now, although it does
not extend as large as it used to. it is looking better each
day.
__________________________________________________________________________
James S. H. Cho h: (415) 326-4657 o: 725-3649 o _ _ _ _ _ _ / _
Center for Integrated Systems, Elec. Eng. / /_\ /\/\ /_\ /_ / / \ / \
CIS-038, MC-4070, Stanford, CA 94301 \__/ / // / \_ _/ \_// / \_/
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