Start by making a green water culture so they have food. They are filter feeders and only get food by filtering water for fine particulates. Ground up fish food isnt even fine enough.
I GOT MY CLAMS TODAY!!
- Thread starter chazsgirl
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Did you do any research on clams before you decided to keep them? I would consider myself an advanced aquarist, and even I dont think I have a tank that would sustain them and I have very mature tanks.
if you dont even know the basics of keeping them I would say they are pretty doomed.
Sorry if this comes off as harsh, but clams are one of the hardest inverts to keep alive in our tanks and if you dont even know what a green water culture is, you need to spend a few days with google and the term freswater clams.
Good luck....green water can me made by putting a piece of lettuce into a big glass of water then letting it sit in the sun for a few days, its basically just suspended algae. I would be target feeding the clams at least once a day with this.
I have to say, I honestly have reservations about this as well. I don't keep clams because they are so hard to feed and monitor properly. Be sure to be very diligent about monitoring your water params and feeding them appropriately or you will have a big disaster on your hands.
Since you already have em, I'd suggest keeping them in a smaller tank in the meantime. It'll be easier to keep a high concentration of food in those tanks (but be careful to stay on top of water quality). In terms of feeding, powdered spirulina and chlorella can be bought at health food stores, and shaking up some with tank water and squirting it over them might be a good strategy. You may also want to employ a feeding dome (2liter with the bottom cut out) to further concentrate the food and give them the best chance of getting enough to eat. Some other foods worth trying would be cyclopeeze, the finest grade of golden pearls, and one of the commercial oyster egg preparations for marine fish.
247 Plants summed it up very well; it is very difficult to keep FW clams alive and healthy. When they die, things go downhill in the tank VERY quickly.
You "might" want to make sure no one turns the filters off (i.e. runs 24/7). You have almost no margin of error here. Good luck!
You "might" want to make sure no one turns the filters off (i.e. runs 24/7). You have almost no margin of error here. Good luck!
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I have never kept clams before but I think it was last week someone posted about their clam. They had been keeping it for over a year so it can be done. The mentioned it was important to allow the clam to completely bury itself in the substrate. I will see if I can remember who posted that.
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