schmiggle
Arachnoking
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2013
- Messages
- 2,220
I was thinking of getting a 15 gallon freshwater tank with one fish (Pao suvattii or Monotrete baileyi) and a golden mussel (Pilsbryoconcha exilis). The care for the former is fairly straightforward; however, there's not a chance that the tank will produce enough food for the latter by itself. This being said, what could I use as food for a freshwater mussel? I was thinking plants like spinach and lettuce could be good, because they eat diatoms (though diatoms have a silicate cell wall where as plants have a lignin and cellulose cell wall), and I was also going to try fish food (those pufferfish will certainly not eat finely ground fish food). Additionally, I need a biological filter no matter what--is there any way to get a biological filter that doesn't filter particulates? A mussel should accomplish any kind of particulate filtering I would need, and a particulate filter would be counterproductive. Also, if all biological filters also filter particulates, how exactly would I hand feed the mussel? I've read you can use a pipette with a kind of mussel-feeding slurry, but I worry that the mussel would decide to clam up D), which would cause the food to be lost in the filter. Should I just pipette very, very gently?
I've read that freshwater mussels can be challenging, but it also seems to me that most of the issues come from misunderstanding (people use a mussel to chemically filter an aquarium, mussel starves from nothing to eat, dead mussel causes ammonium spike). If this is not the case and they really are as impossible as is often claimed, I will avoid keeping one.
I've read that freshwater mussels can be challenging, but it also seems to me that most of the issues come from misunderstanding (people use a mussel to chemically filter an aquarium, mussel starves from nothing to eat, dead mussel causes ammonium spike). If this is not the case and they really are as impossible as is often claimed, I will avoid keeping one.