Odd Clam Event

[skimmerless]

I would like to relate my horror story. I don't know if this is what is happening to your clam, but it is worth a look.

I have a teardrop maxima that displayed some cupping and then retraction over the last several days. He had slowly worked himself into a crevice and I figured that he couldn't open up fully.

Yesterday evening I pulled the clam out of the crevice and found that he wasn't attached. He was attached a week ago. I got suspicious and inspected the clam and found a single pyram snail in a crevice. I set him in an empty bucket to locate a brush. It took a couple of minutes to locate said brush but when I turned the clam over I noticed some movement from the opening to the byssal gland and as I moved closer, a horrible low tide smell. I moved the threads aside with the brush and a claw appeared, then the organism retracted into the clam.

I splashed some freshwater into this area and out pops a gravid shrimp. It was about three quarters of an inch long, clear with black spots and green eggs. Some of the tissue from the opening was almost severed. I don't know whether the clam will survive, but he seems better today than yesterday.

 

[Ventralis321]

Unarce that is freakin Sweet!!

 

[Ventralis321]

hey skimmerless are the gravid shrimp good or bad cause i have a pair living in one of my squamosa's. They don't seem to be bothering the clam but you never know.

 

[ezcompany]

i think in his case, bad...

 

[Unarce]

I saw two commensal shrimp when I first got this clam. Not sure if they're still in there now, though.

 

[skimmerless]

In my case they seemed to be more parasitic than some sort of symbiosis. I didn't actually witness it eating the clam, but when I saw damaged tissue near a shrimp with large claws I figured the shrimp wasn't in there giving the clam a back-rub.

 

[MrMikeB]

Karl,

How is the clam doing? Any idea on what might have caused the problem? I am having like symptoms and was hoping you might have had a chance to figure out the root cause.