Mussels From Ta Beach

[chishnfips]

I was just wondering, could I use mussels shells from a beach to help buffer my tank, I would obviously boil them and give them a good clean to get any nasties of them.

also could you feed fresh mussles from the beach to your fish

cheers chish

 

[nmonks]

Boiling sea shells is, in my opinion, basically pointless. Anything biological (which boiling would kill) will die anyway when put in fresh/brackish water. Certainly rinse away bits of dead animals and anything organic stuck to them that would decay, such as seaweed, but boiling won't remove inorganic pollutants like oil. It's more important to collect from a pollution-free beach. Things like oil can cause harm in an aquarium. You should be able to find out whether your local beach or river is considered "clean" or "polluted".

As for feeding seafood to your fish, yes, it's fine, provided the beach is considered clean enough for humans to eat that seafood too. Obviously a polluted beach isn't a place to collect seafood. In such places there is not only oil and heavy metals, but also sewage.

Cheers, Neale

I was just wondering, could I use mussels shells from a beach to help buffer my tank, I would obviously boil them and give them a good clean to get any nasties of them.

also could you feed fresh mussles from the beach to your fish

cheers chish

 

[chishnfips]

ok cool, I live up in inverness, so the beaches up here i would of thought would be pollution free, especially up the west coast. (i just wont get any mussels from near dounray lol.)

cheers chish

 

[seffieuk]

ok cool, I live up in inverness, so the beaches up here i would of thought would be pollution free, especially up the west coast. (i just wont get any mussels from near dounray lol.)

cheers chish

You could have the first glow in the dark Brackish fish

 

[chishnfips]

lol I know how cool would that be, I wouldn't need lights in my tank lol.

I phoned sepa (scottish environmental protection agency) and they gave me a number to call to find out where is best to collect them from. So I should be able to get some no worries

 

[Galedav]

Just wash them thourougly to make sure theres no meat or stuff stuck to them, in my opinion i would buy them off line, also make sure you know how to feed them

 

[nmonks]

Chances are when you buy them online, you're paying someone else to go collect them. After all, all seashells are made in the sea somewhere!

I actually tend to use the shells from mussels and clams bought from the seafood counter at Waitrose. Rope-grown mussels are very cheap, and besides a yummy supper, the shells are perfectly clean and safe to use because they've been farmed to appropriate standards of cleanliness. Oyster shells, by the way, look lovely in brackish tanks. Get a bunch of them, and silicone them together to form a reef. Very realistic (oyster love brackish water in the wild) and also very popular with the fish, gobies especially will use them as caves and spawning sites.

You might try siliconing the mussel shells to a rock, to create a natural-looking mussel bed. That's often the key to brackish water habitats: take a look at the real thing, and then try to model it at home. Works better that trying to force freshwater things like plants to fit into your brackish water plants.

Cheers, Neale

Just wash them thourougly to make sure theres no meat or stuff stuck to them, in my opinion i would buy them off line, also make sure you know how to feed them

 

[chishnfips]

yeah I think that would look the business I am finally getting somewhere in regards as to where I can pick them, most beaches on the west coast are fine and are grade A, but it changes through out the year due to different bacteria build ups and water qualities in certain areas. The only place on the east coast is Nairn beach and the dornoch firth.

Also would cockle shells be ok to use, they would look pretty good as well.

 

[nmonks]

I did my marine biology degree at Aberdeen, and collecting on the east coast was rubbish, all of it was done on the west coast. Scotland is odd like that. But that said, provided you stay away from harbours and sewage outfall pipes, you should be fine. Stuff washed up on the beach especially will have been scoured by the sand and bleached under the sunshine, so while it might look a bit beat up, it should be fine. I used to collect rocks and stuff for my tanks like this all the time on Aberdeen beach. Even put in things like seabird skulls (they look cool, but disintegrate after a while). Ah, happy days!

And if you can get a bit further north, around Inverness and Cromarty, the water should be spotless there. We used to find all kinds of neat sea creatures, not to mention the odd porpoise bone.

Cockle shells should be fine. Not really estuarine, but they'll substitute nicely for other clams. One thing I'd mention is to avoid putting just perfect shells in the tank. Smash some of them up first. Looks much more realistic. Look around a real beach, and see how many perfect shells you can spot!

Cheers, Neale

 

[chishnfips]

lol, not sure about the skulls in the tank lol, definately like the idea of collecting shells and thing for it though,

its probably something to do with the gulf stream that makes the west coast better for things like that

cheers for the help, as always.

chish