cleaner clams

[Jaws]

I like the fuge idea myself. All natural, can be a natural source of food for the fish if you can have it above the tank so it empties into it and works very well in my opinion. Good Luck!

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

At the old house, I used to buy clams from Superstore, acclimatize them in my cooler water (68-70F) 20g, then transfer them into my 100g fowlr. I had them live in the fowlr for as long as 6+ months. And the great thing was that if they died or the fish got too hungry, the clams became a food source for the hungry fish. Clams are used to entice finicky fish to eat, so there's almost no chance that if it is on the surface or half buried in the substrate that it would die & rot before the fish find & eat it. At least that was my experience, but I had a shallow substrate bed.

The important thing was to acclimatize them in the cooler water (but warmer than in nature) first for a few weeks. (2-4)

Anthony

[mark]

Originally Posted by SeaHorse_Fanatic

The important thing was to acclimatize them in the cooler water (but warmer than in nature) first for a few weeks. (2-4)

Anthony

What would you feed then while acclimatizing, no mantles but what about lighting?

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

They're filter feeders. In the 20g, it was fairly "dirty" so they just helped to clean it for me. Same with the fowlr. When I fed my fish, you could see the siphon tubes poke out of the shell & start sucking up bits of food/nutrients from the frzn mysis & such. I'm not sure how great these manila & butter clams are for nitrate removal. I just thought of them more as living filters to catch & remove small particles.

If I had the money/space/time, I would love to set up a special giant clam refugium as a nitrate remover. Hmmmmm.

Anthony

[Invigor]

Originally Posted by SeaHorse_Fanatic

At the old house, I used to buy clams from Superstore, acclimatize them in my cooler water (68-70F) 20g, then transfer them into my 100g fowlr. I had them live in the fowlr for as long as 6+ months. And the great thing was that if they died or the fish got too hungry, the clams became a food source for the hungry fish. Clams are used to entice finicky fish to eat, so there's almost no chance that if it is on the surface or half buried in the substrate that it would die & rot before the fish find & eat it. At least that was my experience, but I had a shallow substrate bed.

The important thing was to acclimatize them in the cooler water (but warmer than in nature) first for a few weeks. (2-4)

Anthony

thank you, that's what I was looking for. so far I've had 3 split open..I just take them out and let my angels go at em. they love it. When I acclimated them, I didn't use cool water - I just put them in a pail and used an IV line to drip acclimate them for about an hour then dropped them in the refugium. We'll see how/if it helps at all. I also picked up a clump of chaeto finally!