Big hard shelled wormy snaily things

Flame*Angel

Premium Member
I don't know the proper term for these things but I don't think they are very unusual. They look like long hard tubes that sometimes coil, not the tiny white sessile snails, the tubes are thicker. These things make the mucousy net thing. Anway, I have two clams that have them growing up close to the mantle. One clam gets a mucous net over the mantle every day. The other clam seems that the mantle is irritated by the edge of the tube and tends to not open completely or else it tries to hold in a part of its mantle so that it doesn't touch the tube. I've tried to trim back the hard tube, the last time with a pair of pliers. I've even drizzled fresh water into the tube to try and kill whatever is in there so it doesn't grow any bigger. It's not working though, the tubes grow back very fast.

Anyone else have this problem? Is there any way to safely remove these things without hurting the clams?
 
I had a snail that was living in the shell of my clam and doing the same thing as you are indicating.

Although I did not like doing it, I took a pair of needlenose pliers and removed the operculum of the snail, killing it.

What you may have to do is to crunch the tube at the base to kill the snail, or use a syringe and carefully inject something into the tube, i.e. vinegar. Rinse very thouroughy.

mgk
 
Thanks, I think I'll try the vinegar first. I can't believe how well attached these things are, it's almost like it's part of the shell. I'm afraid I'll damage the shell if I try to remove the whole thing or at the very least leave jagged edges that might bother the mantle even more.
 
flame angel, I had the same things on a clam i bought ,and they where indeed part of it's shell , the first night i put it in whatever it was shot out what looked like a spiders web to an acro that was 4 " away and fixed onto it ,i brushed it off and it did it again so i injected it with stop aiptasia from chem marin and that cooked it, there was at least 6 of these things over the clam and they definitely werent friendly:)
 
Last time I had the clams out I used a pair of wire cutters to snip the shells. I got one off but it wasn't easy and I didn't want to risk damaging the clams shells again so I just trimmed down the others and squirted a blob of super glue gel into the openings. It seems to have done the trick :-)
 
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