CATDOLL : CATDOLL: How to raise clams at home

How to raise clams at home

Use salt water with a concentration of about 3% (3g salt plus 100, the OP can adjust it by himself). Too low or too high will kill it. If possible, put some seaweed in the fish tank and change the water every three to five days. It can be kept for a long time.

How do clams reproduce?

Clams are dioecious. During the reproductive season, the sperm discharged by the male enters the gill water tube of the female with the water flow, where it meets the eggs and fertilizes them, and then hatches. There are differences in the future: the marine species hatch as trochophore larvae, which develop into veliger larvae after being released by the female, and finally become juvenile clams; the freshwater species hatch as glochid larvae, which are released by the female and then attach to the gills or fins of fish, temporarily parasitizing, and finally leave the fish body to become juvenile clams.

Clam Introduction:

Ruditapes philippinarum (Pinyin: huā-gé; scientific name: Ruditapes philippinarum) belongs to the family of Clams, also known as Philippine clam or Philippine clam, commonly known as clam in the south. The shell is oval. The shell is hard and thick, and expanded. The top of the shell is slightly protruding and slightly curved forward. Ruditapes philippinarum is widely distributed in the southern and northern seas of China, South Korea and Japan. It grows rapidly, has a short breeding cycle, is highly adaptable (wide temperature, wide salt, wide distribution), and can survive long out of water. It is an excellent shellfish suitable for artificial high-density breeding and one of the four major breeding shellfish in China.

Oviparous

Clams are dioecious. During the reproductive season, sperm released by the male enters the gill water ducts of the female with the water flow, where it meets the eggs and is fertilized, and then hatches.

There are differences afterwards: marine species hatch as trochophore larvae, which develop into veliger larvae after being released by the female and are eventually called juvenile clams; freshwater species hatch as glochid larvae, which are released by the female and then attach to the gills or fins of fish, temporarily living a parasitic life, and finally leave the fish body and are called juvenile clams.

Living habits

It lives in the shallow sea area several meters deep below the intertidal zone. It is mostly found on the muddy seabed. It is distributed along the coast. It can be caught in all seasons and is one of the most commonly used seafood for residents. It lives in the sandy or sandy muddy intertidal zone and shallow sea, especially in the estuary. It uses its axe feet to dig sand and mud, burying in the mudflats and living on the bottom. It is distributed along the coasts of Guangdong and Fujian. Its breeding season is from October to November every year.

Distribution

Clams are widely distributed in the southern and northern seas of my country, with higher production in the coastal areas of Fujian and Guangdong, with the season being in late spring and early summer. They grow rapidly, have a short breeding cycle, are highly adaptable, and can survive out of water for a long time. They are a shellfish suitable for high-density artificial breeding, and have been cultivated in large quantities in Quanzhou Bay, Weitou Bay, and Shenwan.

Clams are dioecious. During the reproductive season, the sperm discharged by the male enters the gill water tube of the female with the water flow, where it meets the eggs and fertilizes them, and then hatches. There are differences in the future: the marine species hatch as trochophore larvae, which develop into veliger larvae after being released by the female, and finally become juvenile clams; the freshwater species hatch as glochid larvae, which are released by the female and then attach to the gills or fins of fish, temporarily parasitizing, and finally leave the fish body to become juvenile clams.

Shellfish (aka clams) reproduction

Multiplacophorans, bivalves, shovelpods and primitive gastropods do not have copulation organs and cannot mate. They can only rely on the parent shellfish to release reproductive cells for fertilization in seawater, or the male to release sperm into the seawater, which is then absorbed by the female and fertilized in the gill cavity or oviduct.

Cephalopod males have one or a pair of specialized stem arms, which they use to mate with the female. There are two ways to do this: one is that the stem arms can fall off automatically to mate with the female, and the other is that they cannot fall off and serve as a medium for transmitting reproductive products. Golden squids have a tail-chasing phenomenon during mating. After a period of tail-chasing, the male first estruses towards the female and tilts the first pair of arms upwards. The female then spreads her arms radially and protrudes her oral membrane. At this time, the male quickly faces the female, each crosses two or three pairs of arms and hugs each other's head. Finally, the male uses the suction cup on the fourth arm on the left, which is the mating arm, to hook the paired spermatophores discharged from the funnel mouth and quickly deliver them to and stick them to the oral membrane of the female. The mating time varies, generally 2-15 minutes. After the first mating, if the male still does not leave the female, there is a possibility of continuous mating.

The short octopus also has the phenomenon of looking for a mate. Once the male octopus meets the female octopus, it will slowly extend its third arm on the right side, the copulatory arm, behind the female octopus. When the tip of the copulatory arm touches the female's mantle cavity, it will immediately fold the tip of the copulatory arm back and insert it into the mantle cavity of the female octopus in a hook shape, and use the suction cup to send the milky white sperm pods ejected from the funnel mouth into the mantle cavity of the female octopus. The whole process takes only 3-4 seconds. Short octopus usually mate in pairs, but there are also cases where two male octopuses mate with a female octopus at the same time. For mating shellfish, the fertilization of sperm and eggs mostly takes place in the mantle cavity.

Gastropods, which are dioecious, also need to mate during reproduction. During mating, the male's copulatory process, i.e., the penis, extends into the female's copulatory sac, where the sperm meets the egg passing through the oviduct to complete fertilization.

Most hermaphroditic gastropods cannot fertilize themselves because sperm and eggs cannot mature at the same time, so they also need to fertilize cross-sex through mating. For species with two genital openings but far apart, such as sea slugs, when mating, multiple individuals are usually arranged side by side, with the first individual playing the female role, the last individual playing the male role, and the series of individuals in the middle playing the male and female roles. In other words, the penis on one side of the second individual extends into the copulatory sac of the first individual, while the copulatory sac on the other side is inserted by the penis on one side of the third individual, and so on, the penis on one side of the last individual extends into the copulatory sac of the second-to-last individual. In species with two genital openings but far apart, there are also cases where only two individuals mate. In this case, only one individual plays the male role, and the other individual plays the female role. For species with only one common genital opening, such as stalk-eyed lung snails, mating can only be done by two individuals. At this time, both play the dual roles of male and female at the same time, that is, fertilize each other.

Among hermaphroditic shellfish, a few species can self-fertilize. For example, dense-scaled oysters, pulmonate snails, basal eye snails, scaphoid snails, scaphoid snails, stylostomidae, and big-eyed snails of the order Stylophora are quite common in this phenomenon. There are two ways of self-fertilization: one is that when the eggs and sperm in the same reproductive nest are moved to the reproductive tube, they directly combine for fertilization; the other is that the penis is inserted into the female tube for self-mating and fertilization, which is only seen in scaphoid snails and stylostomidae.

Some shellfish can reproduce parthenogenetically, that is, the eggs can develop independently without the participation of sperm. It is reported that the black snail of the Gastropoda order can reproduce parthenogenetically.