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Re: Green water/mussels andn clams
On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Tom Barr wrote:
> I recently induced GW to test the effectiveness of Clams and Mussels. They
> didn't do so well IMO against GW. Anyone else care to say something about
> this?
I used freshwater clams to control green water and they worked, but there
were limitations.
The clams seemed to work very well at preventing normal green water
blooms, but they weren't that effective at controlling existing blooms and
sometimes the green water could get out of hand even with them present.
Arguably, adding more clams might have worked better.
Clams proved difficult to keep alive and healthy, and sick or dead clams
do no filtering. Most of the clams I introduced were stressed before I
bought them or collected them and died soon after. I still have a small
clam that I collected two years ago; I didn't know he was there but found
him recently when I tore down an old tank. My record for keeping a larger
clam purchased from the LFS is about a year and a half.
> So how did I induce this GW? I added lots of jobes 15-15-15 and had no
> NO3 before hand and disturbed the gravel bed lots(just like a new tank might
> be unbalanced yet).
The usual cause of a green water outbreak in my tanks is a sharp increase
in lighting coupled with a decrease in plant growth. The change in
lighting is usually caused by seasonal changes in sunlight; the decrease
in plant growth is usually a temporary effect from heavy pruning. The way
this adds up in my tanks is:
heavy pruning + autumn = green water.
Roger Miller