Any experience with freshwater clams?

I've seen these offered once online and thought they were pretty cool.

Supposedly they only max out at about 2" and would prefer a sandy bottom to hide in.

It was said they sift the water for food particles and improve the overall water quality. Like tiny filters.

Anyone keep them or know where to get them in quantity for a good price?

Thanks

clams really need quality pristine water or they die and really foul up your tank. I could not keep them alive for over a week.

oh wow, good to know... I remember losing a few large snails once and they really fouled up the water.. nasty!

yes! clam suck unless you have the worlds most perfect water for em! word of advice! DONT GET EM! i wanted them so bad once! got a few from a local lake i QT them for bout a month!(in a 10g full of lake water! then acclimated them with my show tank water) then tossed em in my show tank! half a week later the worlds funkiest Stank lingered over my living room! right away i new what it was! i did a 75g water change on my 100 and the water still had a lil stank over it and was a lil cloudy!

DONT GET EM!!!!! every one will tell you the same!!!!

purchase 4 lasted one week..stank the tank,,lol no further info..

wow, ok, glad I didn't do that! Thanks everyone

Found some when I went canoeing last year. Threw two of them in a 1,000 gallon horse trough and another one in a 60 gallon 'tadpole' planted pond.

The two in the horse trough (in full sun) lasted for almost a year - lived through the water temp rising to the 90's and falling to the 30's. Didn't die until one of the kids left the tap on all night. That much chlorine got them and the goldfish.

The one in the tadpole pond (rain-filled - tap only added during drought) was still alive the last time I sifted through the bottom in order to find it. It's made it over a year.

BTW - Neither system is filtered.

I'm now debating on getting a few for my planted tank

GOODLUCK!!!
let us now how that goes!!
seriously though im interested in how this will turn out:)
make a thread on it

I got some from ebay a few months back, I cant remember if it was 6 or 8 that I got. I los about half the first two weeks while I QTed them (they never fowled the tank though). I still have 3 and they are in what was the QT tank, it has sand in it, and they love it. They are thriving wonderfuly. I dont change my water as ofter as I should, so I kow I dont have absolutely "perfect" water, but I do have a filter for the house water and add the water straight from my tap with no issues. Every once in a while I can see just the top of them, and they are filtering the water, which seems to help everything in the tank! I want to get more of them.

do you have any pics of em inyour tank?

this pic its a bit hard to find the clam (this is the only one I didnt have to dig up to locate, lol)


This is the same one (Im just pointing it out)


here is the largest of the three (had to dig it up to find it)... first pic it is closed, and in the second pic it opened for a second



and here is the third.... this one has a weirdly shaped shell (its the "oddball", lol)


and here is all three (I partially ucovered the first one)


and in the time it took me to upload the photos and type this, one has almost disappeared!

lol those guys are tiny!! i can se why you water didnt develope a stank!
the ones i had wer bout 1.5" each!

your look nice though! how big is the tank you have em in?

its a 20 gal.

I've kept freshwater clams before. I kept mine in a 20 long plant tank. The only fish I had in there were some gambusia just in case some mosquitoes decided to lay their eggs in the tank. I was able to keep mine alive for about 2 yrs before they passed. They probably would've survived longer had I fed the tank some more. I let it go on its own for a while.:( Not sure what the going price is for these guys nowadays. I had mine about 10 yrs ago and I picked them up at a local auction for like $5 for 5 of them.

I wonder why some users experience is them quickly dying and fowling up the tank, even with great water, and then others experience is them living long, even with not so great water quality...

Maybe where they came from?

Anyone know their origin?

or those who owned them... where were they collected from?

yea, I have a male betta, and a pleco in there, I just moved my lonely krib in there two weeks ago too. I use to have a ghost shrimp, but he disappeared. I alternat between feeding crisps and shrimp pellets, I try to remember at leas every other day to feed them and when I feed with the pellets, I always try to aim for the front-center of the tank which is where the clams are. Having the fish in there makes me remember to feed the tank, lol

bcijoe wrote:

I wonder why some users experience is them quickly dying and fowling up the tank, even with great water, and then others experience is them living long, even with not so great water quality...

Maybe where they came from?

Anyone know their origin?

or those who owned them... where were they collected from?

I got mine from ebay, a lady who raises them sells them.... She is not selling anything right now (I just went on there to see who I got them from; wow, I got them back in June!!) but she does have a webpage which I remember lookng at before bidding- http://www.calikoi.com/

Her price on her page is $9.95 for 5, I got 5 (plus three she added in) for $2 +shipping on eby from her.

i got mine from a local lake! SAL tried the same thing and his didnt make it either!
they were from the same lake!

lake perris