There's a snail in my clam

[DLHDesign]

Bottom of the shot. I'd go for a better pic, but this is about as much as it opens up...

I don't think the snail is alive, so I doubt it's going to crawl out on it's own. I've tried to snag it out, but the clam clamps down on it when I try.

One idea I had was to put the clam somewhere so that it was vertical, then hope that it opens up enough for the shell to fall out... Not even sure how I would get it to stay vertical, much less to get it to open up more than it is...

Suggestions?

(I'd rather have a snake in my boot, to be honest...)

 

[Tahoe61]

Is the clam expanding normally? I can not make out the snail shell. Is it possible it's a hermit?

 

[DLHDesign]

No; it normally fully expands and looks great - right now it's almost fully closed up with the mantle remaining in the shell.

Here's a modified image that should show it pretty clear:

Standard-sized cerith snail. :-(

 

[Tahoe61]

I suppose you can either wait and watch or angle the clam as you described.

Perhaps a turkey baster will blow it out. Is the clam attached?

If you have any frag racks maybe you can carefully prop it almost upside down.

Really hard question on how to proceed. I am pretty leery about using an instrument to remove it, but hey I just have no idea how else to proceed. Might try turning it up side down while you hold it, like when you burp a clam. It might open a wee bit after a min or so.

Good Luck

 

[DLHDesign]

I'm totally confused on how it even got in there... :-S

 

[DLHDesign]

Clam yoga!

Little known fact: It's important when hanging clams upside-down to ensure that they have an Emotional Support Buddy. In this case, the Cardinal jumped at the chance to hide somewhere new...er... help the clam.

 

[Tahoe61]

Ok, so what happened?

;Bored

 

[DLHDesign]

Nothing good. :-(

The "upside-down hammock" was able to shift the snail shell (yay), but the clam never opened up enough to actually allow the snail shell to fall out. The end result was that the shell shifted to the center of the clam - and I still couldn't get it out.
I ended up restoring the clam to a normal position (since hanging upside down resulted in lower light that was not helping things, of course). It seemed to make a small recovery even with the snail more center - the mantle seemed to move around it a bit more and the clam opened up to a slightly greater degree. That night, I was hopeful.
As is normal in our hobby, all the bad things happened overnight. By the time I woke up, I could tell things had passed the point of being recoverable. Over the past few days, the clam degraded away and was eaten by the snails in the tank. I'm now convinced it was all a group snail effort at creating more food for themselves. The only remaining question I have is: was the snail in the clam a volunteer - or a sacrifice?!? 8-|

I'm not really sure what else I could have done - or even done to prevent this; save locating the clam further from the glass, I suppose? I'm unhappy with the result, obviously. I'm setting up a new tank now and will look forward to adding new clams into it.

 

[Tahoe61]

Uggg, sorry. :-(

What were the chances a shell would get stuck, nothing you could have done differently. It's not your first rodeo you know clams can just up and die when you look at them wrong.

Maybe the clam was on the way out and it was attracting scavengers.

Thank you for the follow up.

 

[DLHDesign]

It's not your first rodeo you know clams can just up and die when you look at them wrong.

This was the 4th one in the tank. The first two were my fault (params not stable). The 3rd was a mystery (likely params again, though tests at the time looked good). This one just makes me shake my head. It was doing well; growing out at a good pace. At least I know I can host clams now.

If I can keep snails out of them, at least... ;-)