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#76
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If it dies I think the hermits and whelk will eat him pretty fast. This morning the mussel was swimming on the other side of the tank wedging himself in the rockwork. Pretty neat. I have an H&S skimmer rated for 300g on my 45g tank, and the mussel is only 2" so hopefully I'll be ok.
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Just mind your water and your fish will mind themselves. |
#77
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Well shoot! When looking up clam anatomy I cam across better pictures of clams commonly harvested and I am 99.9% sure the Albertsons clerk was misinformed about thei clams. My clams look like "Little Neck" clams and do not have the patterns found on "Manilla Clams".
http://www.bcsga.ca/bcsgirs/clams/clam.htm |
#78
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Has anybody tried keeping mussels to clean their tank? I live near the beach in So. California. Years ago I took home some mussels I picked off the rocks on the beach. I put them in my tank and they attached themselves and did really good for a long time. They lasted a year or so with out any special care from me. They were in my fish only tank on some live rock I had in there. These were just ordinary black mussels you see on pier pilings etc.. I think I might try again with some really small ones and see what happens. It gives the tank a little black color too.
I just thought I'd chime in and see what the experts think about this. Thanks |
#79
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Update on mine.
I just have one still going strong out of the six. I'll keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't kill off everything in the little tank. To summarize, so far I have had a 1 in 6 survival rate with these. I think a lot of it could be the lack of an easy way of aclimating them. Karl
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I reject your reality and substitute my own. If I'm not in, I'm making something cold. |
#80
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Update:
Something is causing an increase in nitrate in my fish tank. The clams are still alive, but nitrate is up to 40. No food or water changes. My experiment is contaminated. |
#81
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Jlehigh,
Is the Copper Banded Still eating them??? Thanks, Kevin |
#82
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Psionicdragon Look for a dead one. An increase in ammonia waste could cause a nitrate spike.
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Erik Hydo |
#83
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Update: My littlenecks are still doing fine- they are doing quite a job of digging around in the substrate and stirring it up. The cherrystone is still sitting on the surface of the substrate where I originally put him, filtering away apparently happily. Like I said earlier- from what reading I've found, they will need more food than what they can probably get in the average aquarium, so I make sure I feed them phyto and cyclop-eeze when I'm feeding my reef tank in the other room. Recap: I have 4 littlenecks and one large cherrystone in a 20g with a yellow tang, an Eibbli angel, a Kaudern's cardinal, and a gold stripe maroon in love with a condy anemone....and an unidentified black crab that looks a lot like a BIG mithrax. ( I know it's overstocked, but I rescued a few of them from flushing! Now for the reef upgrade....)
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CCPMC of HETMARC |
#84
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In a 20 long or 20 high?
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Erik Hydo |
#85
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I'm not sure- 24"L x 12"W x 16 1/2 " T .
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CCPMC of HETMARC |
#86
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Quote:
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#87
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Yeah that is a 20 high. Not as much water to air surface area as a 20L
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Erik Hydo |
#88
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Cool- all I knew was that the 2 of them fit on the iron stand top and bottom....bought 'em used together.
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CCPMC of HETMARC |
#89
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Update: all still well- the cherrystone has also buried itself. The water looks a lot cleaner/clearer, and there is less detritus visible and in the sand due to them/their digging. The littlenecks move around and rebury themselves with just enough of their shell sticking out to alow them to siphon. No fish problems, or the big ugly black crab, or snails, or the condylactis!
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CCPMC of HETMARC |
#90
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Sweet
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#91
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Not really conclusive, but- SWEET for sure! LOL Extremely interesting!
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CCPMC of HETMARC |
#92
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When my tank is up and running I will have a few in my fuge just to have them. I love all the little hidden life in reef tanks!!!
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#93
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This thread got mentioned on one of the big Canadian boards and since I was wondering if this was going to work myself I decided to giver' a whirl.
I placed 7 cherry stone sized manilla clams in a small tank with some 60ppm Nitrate water and let it go. The thread is HERE Needless to say, it worked like a charm, dropped the nitrates to zero. Dman
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Prisoner Number 642 On parol for reefkeeping Currently doing "time" in a medium security breeding facility for the terminally insane |
#94
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Have we figured out a clam:water ratio yet?
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#95
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Dman, IMO the reason you didn’t see any changes in the first tests, is probably due to the clams still being in the acclimation phase, just like a lot of fish don’t start eating till a few days after introduce to a new tank, your results look very promising but I would be cautious of introducing to many clams as they may not have enough nutrients to survive.
I am ready to try this but I’m only going to start with 6 clams, scrub them real good, then acclimate them in a separate tank for a few days with several water changes from the man tank, this will allow any water that comes in them, to slowly dissipate, if they appear to be doing good, they will then go on a sand bed in to the refugium, with plenty of hermits a n snail, in case one dies they hopefully get eaten up right away, I would then monitor the nitrates and see if they change and depending on these results, try to determine if more clams should be added or not. The goal will be to get the nitrates as close to zero as possible and try to keep a balance where you nitrates are low but still have something for the clams to feed on. These are just my thoughts, if anyone has any other ideas, good or bad, don’t be shy, cough them out, that’s the only way we are going to figure this out. Dman on your test, I appreciate your effort, Keep us posted on what our Canadian neighbors are coming up with.
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Here... take this astronaut dipper so you can spend more time next to your tank. |
#96
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Well it's the next day and I wasn't sure if I was dreaming yesterday or not, so I tested again. My test kit is only moderately sensitive, so when I retested, I have between 0 and 10ppm. Pretty darn good considering where it started from.
Dman
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Prisoner Number 642 On parol for reefkeeping Currently doing "time" in a medium security breeding facility for the terminally insane |
#97
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Taking the plunge. Finnaly got the tank to a point I can work on experiments. Found some "little necks" from alaska at the store. $5 for 24. So I got about 8 in a bucket for isolation and acclimation to tank water as well as "purifying them.
Looking at them they are definatley manilla clams, only got blank stares from the person working there when I tried to explain the difference. Dont even know why I tried. After a week I will drop them in the main tank or maybe in the fuge. Trying to figure if they can do without light if so theninto the "filter" fuge. (filter and water level control only at this time)
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"What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on." -Jacques Cousteau |
#98
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Yet another update: One of the littlenecks died- shell picked clean immediately (never saw it happen, even) by crabs/snails/fish. I have done no water changes on it, only top offs for evaporation. All fish still alive- I moved the condylactis to another tank and the black crab died, but all others still thriving!
Hope all is okay there, NOLACLS....
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CCPMC of HETMARC |
#99
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mr. lizard,
the cherrystone clam.. did it burry itself?
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Dave |
#100
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Sometimes it does, or it's completely not, and then sometimes it's half buried.
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CCPMC of HETMARC |
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