T. maxima spawning!

[returnofsid]

As some of you may know, Angie's Nano has become a Bubble Algae garden! Today, I got sick of looking at it, so Madison and I set to work! We removed ALL the rock, including the rock with her T. maxima clam on it. We kept all the rock in buckets of tank water, removing them, one at a time, and removing as much bubble algae as possible, then placing them back in a different bucket. I then removed as many floating bubbles, and all the bubbles off the sand bed, as possible. During this whole procedure, most of the corals went into our 40 breeder. After finishing it all up, we re-aquascaped, placing everything back in the tank. During this procedure, I also did about a 50% water change. It was a cloudy mess, for several hours, with sand needing to settle. Finally, it was completely clear and I was awaiting Angie's arrival home from work. About 2:30, I looked at her tank, to find it all cloudy again! What the Heck? As I was looking at it, the clam convulsed a few times and spewed out a bunch of sperm! It did this, for about another 30 minutes or so, allowing me to get some pictures and even a couple videos. Then, it went into a resting period, for about 10 minutes, before starting to convulse again, this time, spewing out eggs. The spawning of eggs lasted about 25 minutes.

Unfortunately, by the time I realized what was going on, and got the camera out, the water was already very cloudy, so the pictures aren't the greatest. I'm currently uploading the videos to Youtube and will get them, and the photos, posted soon.

Oh and now I'll probably have to do another HUGE water change, tomorrow...GRRR!

 

[akunochi]

TURN THE SKIMMER OFF! LOL Make baby clams.

 

[returnofsid]

Here's the crappy pics! Clownfish went NUTS, gobbling it up!

Here's a couple pics of the eggs being spewed forth

Videos are taking awhile to upload, so they'll be posted later.

 

[returnofsid]

TURN THE SKIMMER OFF! LOL Make baby clams.

There's virtually no chance of any eggs surviving. Typically, it's said that only about 5% of the billions of eggs actually get fertilized. Then, they go through a 2 stage metamorphis period. Even with the proper set up, it's very difficult to get more than a few to survive. In a typical reef tank, all of the gametes will be eaten by fish, corals, pods, or sucked up in the filtration. The ones that aren't eaten or filtered out, are most likely to get bacterial infections, which kill them. In the proper set up, antibiotics are added, continuously, to avoid this problem. THEN, IF any survive the 2 metamorphosis stages, is that they're "born" without any Zooanthella, so a living clam has to be "sacrificed." A living clam is actually blended up, YES, in a blender, and poured into the raceway, where the babies are able to "collect" the Zooanthella.

 

[Krish]

Pretty cool Sid! If you don't end up with any baby clams, atleast you got to experience this. Keep us up to speed if anything does happen.

 

[returnofsid]

Okay, let's see if this works. Please bare in mind, this is the first time I've used the Canon 7D, to shoot video. I had no idea it also recorded sound, without a microphone attached...lol. I apologize for the poor quality and the sound.

This is the first of 3 videos.

 

[akunochi]

There's virtually no chance of any eggs surviving. Typically, it's said that only about 5% of the billions of eggs actually get fertilized. Then, they go through a 2 stage metamorphis period. Even with the proper set up, it's very difficult to get more than a few to survive. In a typical reef tank, all of the gametes will be eaten by fish, corals, pods, or sucked up in the filtration. The ones that aren't eaten or filtered out, are most likely to get bacterial infections, which kill them. In the proper set up, antibiotics are added, continuously, to avoid this problem. THEN, IF any survive the 2 metamorphosis stages, is that they're "born" without any Zooanthella, so a living clam has to be "sacrificed." A living clam is actually blended up, YES, in a blender, and poured into the raceway, where the babies are able to "collect" the Zooanthella.

Hmm I can donate a clam...every damn clam I get disappears from its shell over the course of a week with no warning. So I will donate the next one to a blender for you to make a baby clam.

 

[returnofsid]

Here's 2 more videos...

 

[stylaster]

congrads that is very cool, if you want to breed them let me know. I have successfully got the spats to settle out. I am now working on trying clam breeding in captive enviroment

 

[Sasquatch]

so this is a stress reaction to an unhappy situation in clam land not a "Im so happy Im gonna spew" kinda thing? watch your parameters that stuff gonna rot real fast

 

[pitkat]

I dont know wether that good or bad lol, The water looks a mess now. pretty cool to see though. Thanx

 

[Darthv247]

it would've released the eggs regardless.. it just decided to do it when it got a little stressed.

 

[returnofsid]

WOW, this thread got resurrected. Just so everyone is aware, within a few hours, the water was completely clear. By the next day, water parameters were all fine. When the spawning event happened, I'd planned on doing a 50% water change, the next day. However, I didn't end up doing that water change and just did my next scheduled water change. Everything was just fine. Angie's Nano has since been taken down, replaced by a 40 breeder. That clam is currently in our 200, doing just fine. It will go into the 40 breeder, in the future.