Freshwater Clam Experience

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dwencel24

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Jun 3, 2013
Messages
33
Location
California
Hi Everyone,

I want to share my experience of taking care of freshwater clams. I am a bottom-feeder lover. I want to collect rare and unique freshwater bottoms feeders (that includes invertebrates). Currently, I have kuhli loaches, cory catfishes, dwarf crayfishes (transparent and orange), micro crabs, assassin snails and nerite snails.

Anyways, as I was browsing around in my LFS, I found these clams for sale (they are actually mussels by the way). As a bottom-feeder lover, I purchased two. I have done lots of research prior to the purchase as I have been planning on buying some online (I got lucky that they are available in that LFS). Many aquarists reported bad experience with them - such as death after aquarium intro or later death due to starvation. The biggest thing that scared me the most was their death after-effect. In addition, some aquarists reported that freshwater clams breed by acting like parasites to fish. But I want them. I really want them. So, I did scientific research to find more info about them (habitat, food, etc). I later decided to get them for my aquarium. It's been a month now and both still are alive.

They are not so hard to take care. I feed them powdered fish food flakes every night. Small flakes have larger surface area which tends to melt faster in water. Well, that does not feed them so much in fact (most food are being filtered). So, every water change, I take them out from the aquarium and put them in a container with green water that I cultured. I do this after water change. I make sure that the water temperature of green water is the same as the aquarium. I will leave them in the container with air pump for few hours or one whole day depending on how fast they clean the water. Then, I will just dump them back to the aquarium.

In addition, in order to prevent them from breeding (if ever one is male and the other is female), I put each at the end sides of the aquarium. My aquarium water cycle/movement will make sure that the male sperms will be filtered and will not even get close to the female. So, no breeding will occur.

In conclusion, I would suggest to those who wants them to do your own research. In addition, make sure that your aquarium is cycled before buying them. These guys can live many years contradict to those that claims that they can only live for at most two years. Having the right environment and care, these guys can grow old with you. I hope that mine will.
 
When I had my 125 set up fresh water.

I put 12 fresh water clams in that I got from the pond.

When I broke down my 125 to turn it to saltwater. I had more than 200 clams in it.

The chances are your going to get more oysters.
 
Thanks for the reply. Likely, you had freshwater clams, which are often more or less rounded or oval. Those are invasive species as they propagate fast and run over local species in rivers, lake, etc. On the other hand, I have FW mussel. According to my research, they can try to reproduce in captivity, but they will never be successful. Good thing that I bought mussel not clam.
 
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