Crocea Clam Spawning

[viperfish]

I did a water change tonight and after the lights went out I was admiring the polyp extension on my SPS coral. All of a sudden my water started to cloud up and that's when I noticed it, my 6" Crocea was opening and closing, each time it did this a bunch of stringy goo came out. Of course I'm Googling like crazy to figure out what is going on, I was pretty impressed with what I discovered. This is a first for me, sort of like a little reaffirmation that all is good in the tank!

[Aquattro]

Clams often spawn from stress, like if the new water coming in is a different temp or salinity than the tank water. Not always a good thing. It's also a mess to clean up, make sure you've got good surface flow to keep O2 up, the skimmer is clean and running properly, and you've got spare water made up just in case you need it. For me, clams spawning is always a bad thing.

[viperfish]

The tank is all cleared up this morning. I'm very fussy about having my w/c water identical to my DT water, salinity, temp, and brand are all the same between the two. I haven't done anything different than I always have so I don't think I have shocked it in any way.

[Aquattro]

Well that's good. I've had them spawn just for fun, but more often from shock. If your tank is clear and everyone is happy, then that's perfect :)

[christyf5]

Maybe it was a full moon? :wink: Always a neat experience as long as you can deal with the cleanup (if its needed). Never had any of my clams spawn though, but my snails do it all the time

[viperfish]

No cleanup necessary. The tank cleared up in a few hours. Although I did plug a filter sock overnight!

[christyf5]

Perfect!! :biggrin: Tony has told me some interesting stories of his clam spawns :biggrin:

[Delphinus]

Certainly once they (the clams) get bigger, the bigger the spawning events - and seems if one goes, another might join in too. I've had a couple clam spawn events that went undetected for too long (e.g. happened when I was at work or something) and the resultant biomatter in the water column began to decay and caused an O2 starvation in the tank .. and I lost fish (they simply suffocated). So definitely something to get on top of right away - do a water change, change the carbon, reset the skimmer, etc. One or two smaller clams might not be as a problem as having a few larger ones (or a larger number of them) go off, like I had that time that I lost fish.

[viperfish]

Good to know. I have four clams in my tank, two of them are very small and from what I can tell it was only the Crocea. The corals love it judging by the polyp extension!