Clam won't stop spawning

trackhazard

New member
10" squamosa has been spawning for 2 days now. Multiple water changes but its still going. It looks quite ragged at this point. Mouth is totally agape and mantle is nearly retracted. I read somewhere that spawning takes a lot out of clams but also that it can be indicative of a last ditch effort before it dies.

Can anyone offer any insights?
 
Are you absolutely sure what you are seeing is spawning? With the rest of what you are describing it sounds like the clam isn't doing well and I'm not sure, even in a 'last ditch effort', the body would expend it's very limited resources on spawning when it's (what sounds like) that far gone.
 
A change in water parameters (among many other things) can induce spawning in giant clams. Here's a few research papers on the topic:

Spawning and Early Larval Rearing of Giant
Clams (Bivalvia: Tridacnidae)
http://aqua.ucdavis.edu/DatabaseRoot/pdf/CTSA130.PDF

Evaluating The Spawning Techniques For Bivalves
http://www.ukessays.com/essays/busi...-of-mintzbergs-description-business-essay.php
(You're most probably dealing with the approaches near the bottom)

And while I haven't had the time to go through all of these papers from Australian Gov't, you may find a few things of use in here as well (it's a large 154 page pdf collection of all things Giant Clam research related, ranging from biology to rearing and nutrition). Leads with a Table of Contents.
The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) proceedings:
http://aciar.gov.au/files/node/2149/pr47_pdf_16740.pdf

I've induced spawning in a Vietnamese Squamosa in the past simply with water changes, so I'd suspect the chemistry shift is what's responsible. Stabilize the water parameters and temperature, increase O2 is much as feasible, and cross your fingers. One of the first papers discusses loss rates after induced spawning in their experiments.
 
Are you absolutely sure what you are seeing is spawning? With the rest of what you are describing it sounds like the clam isn't doing well and I'm not sure, even in a 'last ditch effort', the body would expend it's very limited resources on spawning when it's (what sounds like) that far gone.

Pretty sure it is. The clam spawned before in my wife's tank a couple years back and it was the same. I've watched a bunch of videos of clams spawning in tanks and it looks the same. The thing is, it never looked bad afterwards when it spawned before.

I've induced spawning in a Vietnamese Squamosa in the past simply with water changes, so I'd suspect the chemistry shift is what's responsible.

That may be it. I had an anemone basically get pestered to death by a pair of clowns in the same tank. I didn't see it for a week and then it crawled out from some rocks looking pretty bad. I removed it and noticed my clam spawning a couple hours later. I did water changes afterwards but I think that may have just made things worse as the clam continued to spawn. I decided to lay off the water changes and run a bunch of carbon and filter floss and the clam looks like its done releasing stuff. It doesn't look any better but doesn't look any worse at this point. Hopefully it pulls through.

Thanks for the link. Some real interesting reading.

-Charlie
 
Clam is gone. The clam mantle has pulled away completely from the shell except for in a couple of places. Oh well. Was fun while it lasted. At least we got to see it grow.

-Charlie
 
Sorry you lost it, Charlie. We get attached to the animals we watch over, and that's a good thing, not a bad thing.

Having been down that path before (I lost a 12" violet squamosa due to a Kalk doser malfunction), perhaps now would be a good time to just focus on getting things stable again.

Take your time and search for a good replacement - you know their requirements, you have an idea of what they look like in your system, and you also know how long they can last given a good environment. Might as well search for one that you'll want to hang on to for the next umpteen years.
 
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