FW Clams

[-GlitcH-]

Anyone have any...........I was wondering if they would ruin my nice glosso carpet.

[Mustafa]

Anyone have any...........I was wondering if they would ruin my nice glosso carpet.

Possible, as they dig themselves into the ground and could possibly move around, too. Keeping these guys in tanks is probably not a good idea anyway, as they will have a hard time finding food and you won't even notice right away when they are dead (and polluting your tank).

[CanadianCray]

Some of them can actually hurt your fish. Their larva are parasitic & will infect your fish. Only certain species though.

[badflash]

Freshwater clams are harmless. It is muscles you need to worry about with fish. The larva of muscles grow in the gills of fish. I have fresh water clams in with some of my shrimp. They do move aroud in the sand and make trenches. Being filter feeders they survive just like the bamboo shrimp. There is plenty of particulate for them to filter. I've had mine about a year now. Many have died, but quite a few survive.

[-GlitcH-]

got a few........I'm watching them very closely........so far so good.

Thx guys for the advice.

[bulrush]

Mustafa makes excellent general points. I have had Asian golden clams (which do not breed in a fish tank) for 15 months. I have 3 left, primarily, I believe, because there is little food for them to eat. My water has always been crystal clear, except when I stir up the tank during cleaning.

Here are the specifics. In order to get enough food to survive, my 1 inch clams need at least 10 gallons of aquarium each. They do move, but very little. In fact, mine haven't really moved at all in weeks. If they like the spot they are in, they stay there. They close up most of the time, but when they are hungry, they crack open and you can see 2 little holes. Water goes in one hole, through the stomach, and out the other.

In a nutshell, clams will survive only if you have constantly dirty water. And I do not know how to make dirty water. I think they will like green water if you have some.

[badflash]

They will filter anything that is in the water. I grind up algae flakes for my other filter feeders and the clams get that. When I changed my gravel last weekend I found a few alive & well after an entire year of not noticing them.

[Mustafa]

I found a few alive & well after an entire year of not noticing them.

Why keep them if you can't see them?

[badflash]

I won't be buying more, but at the time I was searching around for ways to keep the water clean. Now that I have that process down, I don't need them. No reason to get rid of them.

[YuccaPatrol]

I collected a few of these asian clams (a terrible invasive pest species, by the way) and tossed them in a cichlid tank a couple years ago. I still see one or two from time to time.

I can't imagine them being much of an effective filter unless you had the substrate full of them.

These clams have single-handedly harmed more of our native mollusc species than anything other than habitat destruction by humans.

[Neonshrimp]

Thanks for the warning Yucca. Are they such a problem because they are so invasive and outcompete the other inhabitants?

[badflash]

In my part of the world, the Zebra Muscle is a lot more of a problem. Talk about invasive! These guys can travel on the bottom of a row boat being towed on a trailer between states. Some agencies report them surviving for a week+ this way. They breed just about anywhere and are good at clogging up expensive heat exchangers at power plants and factories, and are such good filter feeders they out-compete all others and starve the others out.

[Newjohn]

badflash

You have those nasty things also.
The have made a few small lakes around here , as clear as glass.

And with no Algae, nothing else, survives.

John