View Full Version : my first hitchhiker :)
HI
last night my gf said o look there s something movin in ur tank .
wow ! it was very very small some kinda clam hanging with somethin outta him on the glass :)
here s the pic :
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/929df65e3c.jpg (http://www.freeimagehosting.net/)
it s the first live thing i saw in my tank after 4 month , it s just some base rock in there ,and a few mins lata it was gone ... so my guess is right ? it s a hitchhiker yeah ?
and anything i should do ? how is it feed ?
thnx
Ace25
05-08-2009, 11:27 PM
Definately a cool hitchhiker and a new one on me. It does look clam like but I can't say I have ever seen anything like it. I bet phytoplankton would be its diet, but I doubt you would need to feed it yourself. If you did 1 drop a day of something like phytofeast a bottle would last you a year, unfortunately it would spoil long before then.
thnx :) should i expect more if these things ? i noticed some new clams attached to rocks ( i maybe wrong ) , and one stupid questions , is hitchhikers some kinda eggs that s in the rocks or they r hiding in there and come out ? if they r eggs , is it possible as others have shrimps or crabs outta their rocks .. i see one of them growin in mine ? :)
Ace25
05-08-2009, 11:55 PM
I am sure you have A LOT more life in your tank than you know. If you are just now noticing bigger things on the glass then there has to be lots of little worms, amphipods, and copepods scurrying around as well. If you have access to a blue light, I have one of those little keychain squeeze LED lights that is made for night viewing and you see lots of things running at night.
Hitchhiker is just a term for anything that came attached to something else you bought. I once bought an anemone that had a hitchhiker anemone crab in it that was really cool to watch. Even if you used dead rock there is always that chance that something survived, and after 4 months of slowly building up the population they are finally coming out of the rocks for you to see.
scootrnerd
05-08-2009, 11:57 PM
cool!
wow :) i m so excited :) my very first sw experience ...
How come you have no fish or inverts in your tank after 4 months?? Reef only system?
BioHazard
05-09-2009, 6:26 PM
I'm guessing its some kind of larval bivalve.
Heres a pic of another kind I found.
http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/pkrug/lab/images/P8110115.JPG
Amphiprion
05-09-2009, 7:32 PM
It is a clam, but it is no longer in the larval stage. It is a small version of the adult. All those appendages are the siphons, which are what most are like. The clams that aquarists are familiar with (Tridacnids) are oddities in the clam world in a number of respects. It makes other clams seem odd if that is all you are used to.
It is a clam, but it is no longer in the larval stage. It is a small version of the adult. All those appendages are the siphons, which are what most are like. The clams that aquarists are familiar with (Tridacnids) are oddities in the clam world in a number of respects. It makes other clams seem odd if that is all you are used to.
thnx a lot for info ... i maybe wrong but i noticed some new clams attached to rocks ,again i maybe wrong but i didn t notice them before ...
How come you have no fish or inverts in your tank after 4 months?? Reef only system?
no , it s only baserock in there , i just started tank fresh and used shrimp method to cycle it , i still had high nitrite read few weeks ago , and finally bout 2 weeks ago it came down to <0
i m gonna buy some other tests today ( i just have ammonia , nitrate and nitrite ) and gonna open a new thread to go to next step ( add live stock ) safe with help of other guys :)