Ive heard of using Cuddlefish bone for adding calcium carbonate to your water for snails and shrimp. Is this the same cuddlebone that is sold for birds also? And if so how and how much do you add for a 2 gal tank w/ three ghost shrimp and four snails?
Cuddlefish Bone?
- Thread starter VTwinFanatic
- Start date
Cuttlebone is a good additive for supplementing snails with calcium. just place one piece in with a weight on it, and they will graze it for calcium. it does not dissolve easily in watr so it stays for a good long time. If I use a full piece in my smaller tanks, it takes several months to get used up, and I have a huge snail load (snail brreding tanks).
FYI. cuttlebone can be found in the bird section of you LPS.
Dave
FYI. cuttlebone can be found in the bird section of you LPS.
Dave
Yah dey do.
I had the distinct advantage of reading the name via RTR's snail article, but it still took me several weeks to actually locate a source for it. I finally got frustrated and googled it. of course that led me to bird lover websites and I figured out it was one aisle past the fish section at petsmart.
Dave
I don't know the real answer to this, I do know that deer antlers are hair, not horn or bone and therefore I would be suspect as too how much of what they might add. There may be a good level of calcium in them, I just really don't know.
Dave
Lobo. said:
I also dont know how it would affect the fish, but i do know that squirrels eat them for calcium and other minerals in the antlers, but like Dave said I really dont know.....be wary, if you decide to do it i would atleast put it in a bucket for a week or more and check all the water parameters before putting it in your tank.
http://www.enaturalist.org/topic.htm?topic_ID=28)
Yes, antlers are bone essentially and horn is keratin (finger nails, hair etc...). So I assume you would get the same result from an antler as from a ham bone. The mineralized bone material shouldn't have much effect on your tank. But I would boil it first to kill off any bacteria and potentially any organic material that may still be on it as this will prevent the water from fouling.
Yes, antlers are bone essentially and horn is keratin (finger nails, hair etc...). So I assume you would get the same result from an antler as from a ham bone. The mineralized bone material shouldn't have much effect on your tank. But I would boil it first to kill off any bacteria and potentially any organic material that may still be on it as this will prevent the water from fouling.
The advantage to cuttlebone is that is very soft and light on the business side, the snails can rasp it away easily. I doubt than true bone will dissovle readily at tank pH, no idea about antler.