Re: Clams and Mussels

[Billinet at aol_com]

Hello,

When I was a kid, my 20L aquarium would become cloudy occasionally for all 
the usual reasons - overfeeding of fish, too many of them, too much decaying 
material in the tank, etc.  The tank itself was healthy and fascinating to me.

I couldn't afford a filter (not that it would have done much good) but I had 
read somewhere that mussels were filter feeders, so I went to a nearby pond 
and caught one.  I put it in my tank and within a day the water was crystal 
clear.   The mussel had dug up many of my plants (vals mainly, I think) because of 
its prowling through the substrate.

I returned it to the wild, and the next time I used a mussel for a cloudiness 
problem, I put it into a container so that it couldn't disrupt the plantings. 
 It still worked fine.

I think the plants in that aquarium, lit by two 25 or 40 watt incandescent 
bulbs, grew better than any plants I've had since.

Bill