captive breeding clams

Sid

Premium Member
i wondered if it was possible to captive breed clams so i went in search of info but there is one stage in the rearing that seems a bit brutal, the part that i am refering to is putting a clam into a food blender!.
apparently the developing clams do not inherit zooxanthellae from their parents, what you have to do is when they are a few days old get a healthy clam, cut it out of its shell, put in a blender, sieve the result and add the remaining liquid to the cultering pool and they pick it up from the water.
is this really the only way, how does this work in the wild?, isnt there some substitute (zooxanthellae in a can?).
any information on this would be helpfull because if this is the case i dont really want to try it.
 
Hello Sid, you must provide zooxanthellae for your clams via a parent. You don't have to kill a parent clam to get its zooxanthellae. Some farmers take sections (chunks) of mantle from a healthy clam, score it, dip it in water, and proceed to obtain zooxanthellae this way. It is primitive, but you must free up as much zooxanthellae from the mantle as possible.

Granted, the most effective way to obtain pure algae from this method is to centrifuge this mixture - and some do. You will find the particulate matter and algae separate themselves nicely.

Now, the bad news. There are a few reasons why you will be wasting your time if you try and breed clams yourself in a closed system.

1) Water. You don't have enough of it. Clam rearing consumes many, many, gallons of sea water - for reasons you already know.

2) Parent Clams. To get the amount of zooxanthellae you need, you pretty much have to slice and dice a lot of parent mantle to get enough free-floating zooxanthellae in the water so the larvae can capture it.

3) Time. It takes 2 to 3 years to grow the little buggers out to salable size. (1.5 to 2 inches)

Finally........

4) LOTTERY! A very very small percentage of clams will actually be the "ultra" or "electric" coloration we all know and love. This is regardless of whether you use colorful clam mantles to begin with. The estimated percentage from one farmer I talked to said it was somewhere from 5 to 7 percent or less of all reared clams.

Now, each step I mentioned comes at considerable cost to you. Assuming you succesfully raise 100 clams, you will get 7 with ultra coloration. Of the 7, let's say 3 make it to 2 inches. You lose another 2 to disease.

That leaves you with one clam, man!!
:lol:

Hundreds, thousands of English pounds later and several years, you would labor to produce one clam! (If you're lucky.)
You can easily see why no one can compete with clam farmers in the islands - it is even a tough job for them. But, who am I to stifle the hopes of an ambitious reefer!

Good Luck

PS: In the wild, you have free floating zooxanthellae everywhere in the coral reef. Clams release millions of gametes. Of the millions, perhaps a few will survive. Also, although ultra colored clams are a very small percentage of total clam production, the market is still very much demand driven. There is no shortage of ultra clams. People are willing to pay high prices, so they sell for 70, 80, 90, or even $100.

Pretty funny considering each sessile seed clam from a farm at 1-2cm costs 15 cents.
 
Thanks for that reply, i will stick to setting up another system just for fragging i think, worth a thought though.
 
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