Breeding Clams....
- Thread starter r3tic
- Start date
From the book Giant Clams by Daniel Knop....
You need to start with mature, full grown clams. They are hermaphrodites but only full grow specimens produce viable eggs. This is why I would like to try to breed croceas...they are the smallest and the easiest to get full grown specimens of.
The first and seemingly toughest part is to induce spawning. There are several ways to do this, the first being injecting hormones. The second being taking a biopsy of the gonads puree them and inject it into other clams. The third, easiest and the rought I'm leaning towards is to place the clams out of water in the sun for 30min-1hr. Then they spawn....first sperm and then 20-30min later eggs. This is to be siphoned off into seperate containers as each occours. Then you mix them in a 100+ to 1 ratio(very little sperm to a lot of eggs).
The larva hatch in about 12 hrs and need to be fed phyto and will settle out of hte water column in 1-2 weeks. You also need to introduce the symbotic algae as they are not born with it. Knop recomends maserating some adult clam tissue and feeding it to the larvae.
After that feed lots of phyto till the mature. Except for the inducing of the spawn, it doesn't sound any more difficult than breeding clown fish.
Any one gonna try???? I will.... need to grow my stock first
You need to start with mature, full grown clams. They are hermaphrodites but only full grow specimens produce viable eggs. This is why I would like to try to breed croceas...they are the smallest and the easiest to get full grown specimens of.
The first and seemingly toughest part is to induce spawning. There are several ways to do this, the first being injecting hormones. The second being taking a biopsy of the gonads puree them and inject it into other clams. The third, easiest and the rought I'm leaning towards is to place the clams out of water in the sun for 30min-1hr. Then they spawn....first sperm and then 20-30min later eggs. This is to be siphoned off into seperate containers as each occours. Then you mix them in a 100+ to 1 ratio(very little sperm to a lot of eggs).
The larva hatch in about 12 hrs and need to be fed phyto and will settle out of hte water column in 1-2 weeks. You also need to introduce the symbotic algae as they are not born with it. Knop recomends maserating some adult clam tissue and feeding it to the larvae.
After that feed lots of phyto till the mature. Except for the inducing of the spawn, it doesn't sound any more difficult than breeding clown fish.
Any one gonna try???? I will.... need to grow my stock first
