fresh water clam
- Thread starter p3p434
- Start date
be careful, the clams start out as parasitic larva that can harm your fish. good news the larva arent that harmful to healthy fish
What does the clam look like? It is mainly the ones that look like muscles that produce the parasitic stage, if the fish in the tank start flashing or gaping thier gills its is probably the parasitic kind, the chemicals used to kill snails, copper sulfate I think, will get rid of them.
Clams are rounded, like golden asian clams or the manila clams found in the market, FW mussels (also called clams) are larger and more elongate.
The asian golden clam, and close relatives is harmless but tends to die from starvation in most clean tanks unless they are target fed. Then they rot unless you have a scavanger, like crayfish, to eat them.
The FW mussel types are also fairly harmless if your filter return passes through a UV sterilizer. The parasitical young are not so much parasites as they are hitchikers, they clamp on to gill tissues of fish causing irritation and sometimes secondary infections, until they develope a shell, then they drop off, In the wild this protects the young and distributes them across a wider range, much like clinging plant seeds. In a tank the fish are exposed to a much higher concentration of the young than they would be in the wild. The UV sterilizer reduces the concentration. They also have a habit of dieng and rotting in fish tanks and as they are usually much larger than the clam types they tend to cause more problems.
The FW mussel types are also fairly harmless if your filter return passes through a UV sterilizer. The parasitical young are not so much parasites as they are hitchikers, they clamp on to gill tissues of fish causing irritation and sometimes secondary infections, until they develope a shell, then they drop off, In the wild this protects the young and distributes them across a wider range, much like clinging plant seeds. In a tank the fish are exposed to a much higher concentration of the young than they would be in the wild. The UV sterilizer reduces the concentration. They also have a habit of dieng and rotting in fish tanks and as they are usually much larger than the clam types they tend to cause more problems.