Clams or Mussels in an aquarium...

[Magnum Man]

Starting with I bought a pretty big shoal of bitterling... they are babies / juvinal fish, right now, but seem to be thriving... I'm not really a fish breeder, but the bitterling have a unique symbiotic relationship with clams or mussels, with the female laying their eggs in one, and the fry live in the live mussel, until they get big enough that they move out... clams and mussels are both filter feeders, and technically good for an aquarium, but would likely need to be fed, I'm thinking via pipette or similar tool...

a problem... I live in Minnesota "land of 10,000 lakes" which they try to protect from invasive species ( think Zebra mussels ), so most species, can't be sold here...

there are blurbs, on the www. about taking food grade mussels and putting them in an aquarium, as they are supposed to be live, when you cook them and eat them...

back to the bitterlings, they are not "shell dwellers" per se, they do require live shellfish to reproduce... again, I'm not really a fish breeder, but as my bitterling reach maturity, it would be really interesting to witness their unique ritual...

so I'm sure someone must keep clams or mussels in an aquarium, and want to talk about keeping them... and has anyone ever tried taking a live "food grade" animal, like mussels, and added it to an aquarium???

 

[GaryE]

I live in a similar environment to you, and I have often found freshwater mussel shells, some occupied, on beaches and riverbanks. You haven't exactly bought your bitterlings in a season where I'd want to go looking, but the fish should still be around and even larger in Spring.
I know nothing of the legalities, or of how to keep them if they're legal to do so with. They wouldn't be invasives if they came from local water, and I would follow the native fish mantra of 'once removed, never returned', because you wouldn't want to introduce aquarium pathogens to a natural habitat. But you might want to explore that.

In the old testament of North Amerian fishkeeping, William T Innes, I believe there's an entry on one of the bitterlings with a native mussel.

 

[Archerfish]

I do not have personal experience (at home) but worked with some biologists who were propagating them for study. Here is what I know about keeping them at home: Don't. They are filter feeders as you know. Pet shops used to sell them to clear up cloudy tanks etc and they in fact did that very well. The problem is they eventually run out of food, starve and foul the tank.

 

[AJ356]

Starting with I bought a pretty big shoal of bitterling... they are babies / juvinal fish, right now, but seem to be thriving... I'm not really a fish breeder, but the bitterling have a unique symbiotic relationship with clams or mussels, with the female laying their eggs in one, and the fry live in the live mussel, until they get big enough that they move out... clams and mussels are both filter feeders, and technically good for an aquarium, but would likely need to be fed, I'm thinking via pipette or similar tool...

a problem... I live in Minnesota "land of 10,000 lakes" which they try to protect from invasive species ( think Zebra mussels ), so most species, can't be sold here...

there are blurbs, on the www. about taking food grade mussels and putting them in an aquarium, as they are supposed to be live, when you cook them and eat them...

back to the bitterlings, they are not "shell dwellers" per se, they do require live shellfish to reproduce... again, I'm not really a fish breeder, but as my bitterling reach maturity, it would be really interesting to witness their unique ritual...

so I'm sure someone must keep clams or mussels in an aquarium, and want to talk about keeping them... and has anyone ever tried taking a live "food grade" animal, like mussels, and added it to an aquarium???

Will be following as I am interested in doing this as well

 

[AJ356]

I do not have personal experience (at home) but worked with some biologists who were propagating them for study. Here is what I know about keeping them at home: Don't. They are filter feeders as you know. Pet shops used to sell them to clear up cloudy tanks etc and they in fact did that very well. The problem is they eventually run out of food, starve and foul the tank.

An interesting thing to find out here, is how to spot a dead or better yet, dying mussel in the aquarium. I've heard people say you can't tell if a mussel is dead or alive sometimes? That would mitigate the scare stories about fouling the tank.

However, whenever something dies I guess there is a risk of other bad staff happening in terms of pathogens developing?

This kind of project comes with risks, sure, but what an interesting thing to try, in my opinion.

 

[Magnum Man]

I understand, they would need to be fed... although the bitterling breeding process, must offer some food, as the fry grow, and pass poop , probably any infertile eggs and such...

shellfish are also known as carriers of parasites, and other things, I'd be nervous about adding them from a local lake... unsure about any kinds of medication or treatments for wild shellfish???

 

[Magnum Man]

I'm not sure, but I think they may open after dead??? but then on shellfish, you are not suppose to eat the ones that don't open during cooking, so maybe they lock themselves closed, until that muscle deteriorates to the point that the shell falls open, at which case it would be a toxin dump...

 

[AJ356]

Is there much difference to clams and mussels? You wouldn't want to do clams and find out the bitterling refuse them? Maybe to a bitterling, it's all the same?

 

[AJ356]

Everything on YouTube seems to be about clams and not mussels

 

[AJ356]

I've just been looking on YouTube. The challenge is to find content that goes into the longer-term of keeping mussels/clams alive, and how to avoid them starving. All the video's I saw are focused on the short-term benefit of them filtering the aquarium water, and all these "unboxing" content videos. Most of these videos, the content creator has not had the mussels/clams long enough to really educate us.

 

[Donya]

so I'm sure someone must keep clams or mussels in an aquarium, and want to talk about keeping them... and has anyone ever tried taking a live "food grade" animal, like mussels, and added it to an aquarium???

A looong time ago I did this with saltwater mussels. It was an accident - I thought I was getting already dead ones with the intent to pop them in the freezer at home and feed them over time to a big crab. Well, like you said, they were not all dead! I first put them in a bucket with a strong bubbler, since they needed to gill purge and shed a lot of dead tissue and other goop that makes a HUGE mess. Many 100% WCs on the bucket over a couple days and boy did it stink at times. Basically you should never stick a bivalve that’s been sat in air for a long time and put it straight in an established tank because of the mess factor. Some are also likely already dead or dying and will need to be picked out as it becomes obvious. Anyway, I ended up keeping the survivors in a 55gal reef tank that supported a lot if other filter feeders. Many lasted about a year, a few longer (they weren’t a properly tropical species so early burnout was kind of expected).

 

[Magnum Man]

I'd looked it... this is the AI listing

seems like mussels would be the easiest to maintain, sounds like they are more stationary, make them easier to feed, as long as they don't attach to something you can't work with...

I like to eat both, maybe a food grade mussel, I'll try to add to a different tank for an experiment

 

[Rusty_Shackleford]

Fortunately these days there are all kinds of copeopods, moina, and other such planktonic critters commercialy available that feeding should be no problem.
Acquisition is the hard part. I think the most viable route is collecting native mussels yourself in the spring.
There is no guarantee that commercial grade live seafood will actually be alive. You won't know what species it is. Then there is the stress of whatever harvesting and shipping methods are used for food.
At least native specimens are likely be healthier and kept alive during the relatively short transport time. You could very likely identify exact species you collect which would aid in its care. Plus you can always go back and get more.

 

[GaryE]

So crash a car into a stream, wait a few weeks, and maybe you'll have a mussel car.

Any mussel that carries parasites will carry them from the shop as likely as from a stream. There's a bit of a myth of the dangerous wild thing and the safe farmed thing.
If I have a farm and someone orders live freshwater mussels, someone who works for me is sent out to get some. They aren't bred on fish farms, so they'll be tropical mussels whose possible parasites may be a better match for the fish than North American ones.
It seems to me that breeding bitterlings would involve constant recollecting, and the death of a lot of mussels.

Again, ethically, you can't put them back. You'd be regularly harvesting them, to keep the tank going, and where you are, the breeding project would only be for the warmer months. It could be interesting, but I wouldn't make any moves to get it started until those bitterlings were large and sexually mature. I see that species grows to 8cm/3.5 inches, so I would keep it on the back burner til they were at least 3 inches in length.

 

[Magnum Man]