Clam Shell

[Nessie]

Freshwater 55 gal: Can I use a real clam shell in a freshwater tank? I boiled it for 1 hour in a huge pot. Thanks, Nessie

 

[Etunes]

Yes, I would scrub it as well and then let it air dry but yes i would see no problem with puttiong it in your FW tank.

 

[Nessie]

Clam shell

Thankyou. I am new and setting up a 55 gal-in the first cycle stage. I wasnt sure if it would hurt the freshwater fish or not. Thanks again, Nessie

 

[jsoong]

Moved to FW - General where this belongs .....

The only thing with shells & FW tanks is that the shell will dissolve into the water slowly & raise its pH & KH. This might not be much of a problem if you have alkaline water (pH in the high 7's). In acidic water, it might cause major parameter shifts. It is best to soak it in a bucket of tank water for a week or so & see how fast the pH changes to gauge if the parameters will remain stable enough. <The pH will slowly increase in all water to the carbonate equilibrium pH of 8 or so, but if the shell dissolve in slow enough, you can maintain stable parameters if you do regular weekly water changes.>

 

[sub ceroh]

I would soak it in vinegar too.

 

[jsoong]

sieski, I deleted your post, since you quoted hvg4's SPAM post, with all the spam links intact, defeating the purpose of Neilanh's deletion of the original post.

In future, you can use the report post feature to deal with those posts.

 

[cabezon]

Nessie, I have a FW tank that uses beach sand as a substrate, with a lot of shells and shell frags. I rinsed it in a 5 gallon bucket. What can I say, free is better than expensive.

YMMV