Clam broke—anyone made a prosthetic?

[Robert Binz]

I have a durasa clam that broke during my move to the suburbs after my wedding.

it’s still alive but it looks like the bottom hinge shattered, so it’s trying to hold itself together with the shell basically in two halves.

I saw some online resources about making prosthetic hinges but the directions were poor. I am wondering if I can just super glue the bottom together and let a new hinge grow under it.

Anyone been through this? The easy solution is to treat it as a gonner, but I’d like to try

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Based on the very limited research on clam prosthetics that I've been able to find, it looks like you would want to provide essentially two mounts (one on each side of the clam's shell by the hinge) and then connect them with a solid but flexible bridge of some kind - the thread you commented on yesterday used two 3D printed mounts held on by hot glue/super glue with a rubber band as the bridge, a professional aquarium with a video up on YouTube used basically a stainless steel coat hanger that was twisted into a figure eight to act as both the mounts and the bridge and they held it on with a two part epoxy.

I'd try to follow that general process (two mounts and a semi-flexible bridge) and then just offer physical support (probably by bracing the sides of the clam's shell halves with rocks) to try and help so the clam doesn't have to hold quite as much weight on it's own while it's recovering.

It seems like you could literally just super glue one rock to each shell half and hook a bunch of rubber bands (or one stronger rubber band) between the two and use that as temporary hinge for the clam while the clam recovers. I don't know how well it would work, but I agree that it'd be worth a shot to try.

Also, based on the very limited research on the regenerative abilities of injured Tridacnid clams (and dependent on the severity of the injury), I'd assume that if the clam is able to recover successfully, you'd likely be looking at a minimum of 3 months recovery (I'd guess closer to 6 or 9, but that's a complete guess - again very limited research has - to my knowledge - been done on this topic).

 

[gbroadbridge]

I have a durasa clam that broke during my move to the suburbs after my wedding.

it’s still alive but it looks like the bottom hinge shattered, so it’s trying to hold itself together with the shell basically in two halves.

I saw some online resources about making prosthetic hinges but the directions were poor. I am wondering if I can just super glue the bottom together and let a new hinge grow under it.

Anyone been through this? The easy solution is to treat it as a gonner, but I’d like to try

Interesting question

I'd be tempted to just let it be and see what happens. These animals have a wonderful ability to repair things.

Interested to see what others say.