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Fresh Water clams...yeah I know this is "Nano-Reef" but...


BlueThumb

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In fresh water tanks, it's said that bio-pellets are not a good idea because you don't have protein skimming (let's not argue over this those of you with koi ponds) or abundant filter feeders to filter out the excess bacteria. Thus nutrient export, which is the goal, isn't actually happening.

 

So while at my local LFS, I spotted some good size freshwater clams. Lightbulb! It turns out that most fresh-water clams are pretty good at filter-feeding bacteria (allegedly). So why not use freshwater clams to filter-feed on the excess bacteria. It's nutrient export via clam growth. Anyway, to keep this simple, I'm going to put a small bag of bio-pellets in my HOB filter chamber, e.g. I'll pack them with some filter floss so they don't clump up. I bought a couple of clams and now plan to do a very unscientific study.

 

My highly anecdotal premise is that if the clams live and my tank shows better "cleanliness", it's working! Probably. Working can be defined as I've got a good bacterial population living on the bio-pellets that are improving my ammonia/nitrate cycle - and then I've got clams eating up the excess bacteria. I have two nearly identical nano tanks so I'll run one of them with bio balls and clams and the other without.

 

This is going to take a lot of time to figure out so I'm not going to do a play by play. If it seems to be working, I'll share the unscientific/anecdotal information. Yes, this is Nano-Reef but most fresh-water forums are not really at the level of reefers. Hell yeah we have egos!

 

Comments? Jokes?

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My freshwater clams never did much they were mostly for entertainment. Sort of like a wheres waldo as they moved around in the gravel/sand bed.

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The thing with fresh water clams is they will also eat micro algae, and micro organisisms in the water more so than bacteria, bacteria are self regulating, ie, they will only grow their population size that equils the bioload going in, and any living thing is going to also give off waste, there by feeding the bacteria, so its pretty much a circle, people say that fresh clams eat bacteria to more or less make a person think their tank has "natural" flirtation and requires less maintince, thouhh I have seen fresh clams help witj green warer issues

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  • 5 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...
BlueThumb

Update: both my clams are still living and filter feeding. I don't know how well they are helping my "filtering" but I'm going to add more and see what happens. I still have algae issues from under gravel fertilizer I have to use for my plants.

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