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3K views 22 replies 11 participants last post by  reiple 
#1 ·
Man...


I cannot believe there are not any threads in this forum...

OK, to start, I am feeding my little electri blue Maxima (sounds like something you'd get at an adult toy store...:D ) DT phytoplankton by taking a 1 litre pop bottle and cutting the bottom out of it, placing the bottle over the clam, and pouring enough DT in through the neck of the bottle (with an extension tube to take it above the surface of the water column) to turn the water slightly turbid green. I leave the bottle in place, the clam will clear the water in about 30 to 45 minutes...

Just a helpful little feeding hint, this should be done for ALL smaller clams (up till they are around 2" in size (across the narrow part of the shell, not the length...)) Although they can supply a good portion of their nutrition via autotrophic means, clams in general are primarily filter feeders, and in reef tanks in particular may have problems getting enough nitrogen to be completely autotrophic without some filter feeding.

just My 2 Cents...
 
#4 ·
Great minds think alike, I guess... I have a similar contraption connected via airline tubing to a 100ml syringe. Not very graceful, but gets the job done. Now that the maxima is getting close to 3.5" I don't use it as often, but it's handy to have - just in case I bring home another. :)

Which reminds me, I need to go feed some DTs.
 
#6 ·
Assuming that its Nannochloropsis (which I will for the moment, unless someone knows what DT's actually is), the size fraction is around 1.5-2.5 um, DT's makes an ideally sized food source for Tridacna and Hippopus clams. The trick is to feed with a high dilution (ie, no direct target feeding). When in high concentrations, foods of normally ideal food sizes will be captured, clumped and rejected by the animal. Tom's method sounds pretty good to me :D
 
#11 ·
Casey said:
I just bowl feed em and it works fine.:)
heh!

My take on this is that so long as they get fed (the small ones) then it doesn't matter what particular technique you use. The whole reason for using this contraption originally was to target feed without target feeding, to get it where it needed to be without worrying about things like skimmers removing the DT's or moving the clam. Handling them may become an issue if you're taking them in and out of the tank, in particular when they get some size or they actually attach to a large solid piece of rock. (heh, I am big on making sure NOT to keep my hands in the tank long for SEVERAL reasons :eek: ) Using the bottle to feed them is just another way of not moving the clams once they find a place to be "Happy as a clam"...

BTW, Chris is correct, the alga is Nannochloropsis oculata, and although the DT product does not contain the following, I would think that Isochrysis spp. would be nutritionally adequate and of the correct size, with the added benefit of being motile in addition to the correct nutritional density. I just found an article that states that juvenile clams do not have enough mantle area to supply their metabolic needs and will require filter feeding of sufficient nutritional density to supply 65% of their total nutritional needs until mantle size becomes adequate (I would suppose that the 65% drops gradually as mantle size surface areas increases with growth, but the article did not state that.)

I think that if I had unlimited time, I would culture my own DT's, but unless you're willing to spend the time required to keep good culturing technique going, you're most likely to end up culturing Cyanobacteria spp.. I think I'll just let Dennis to all the work... :D
 
#12 ·
Hey Tom, I've heard of hatcheries using Isochrysis spp. to buffer their seawater concentrations of nanoplankton, as the juvies are in such high concentrations in the tanks as to need supplementation.

Chris
 
#14 ·
Phytoplankton is a primary source of nutrition for a multitude of colorful and interesting inhabitants of live rock. Regularly feeding with DT's Marine Phytoplankton will promote the growth of the incredible variety of live rock fauna, while providing additional nutrition for the other fine filter feeding marine invertebrates in the mini-reef aquarium. Examples: Sponges, Corals, Anemones, Bi-Valves, Tube Worms, Sea Apples and Micro-organisms that Make up Zooplankton, Including Rotifers.

This is a live culture. :D
 
#15 ·
DT is short for DT's Phytoplankton. It is a live culture of nanochlorist. The DT's part is the initial's of the company's owner. Currently Dennis is working on a new blend of DT's with three types of phyto in it to get several different sizes.
 
#16 ·
Thanks for the explanations, guys!!

I found several sources for the product. At this point, I'm just a clam-keeper-wannabe. Altho my reef is doing very well so far, it's still pretty young (less than 6 months) and I'm just getting back into the hobby after a 6 year hiatus. So, in addition to having a lot to relearn, I've got a LOT of completely new (to me) stuff to add to the ole' knowledge base. There's answers to questions out there that I wasn't even sophisticated enough to ask that many years ago. So.... I'll be doing a LOT of reading and lurking before I'd even consider bringing one of these beautiful creatures home.

Speaking of questions.... OK, so the smaller clams do indeed need feeding. How oftern?

Thanks again,
Bert
 
#17 ·
Not really sure how often to feed the small ones I try not to buy small ones. I have a minimum requirement of 3 in to purchase,I keep my clams on the dsb so they cant attach and I dont actually remove them I just lift them up in a bowl and it hangs from a hook at the top of the tank the bottom stays in the water to keep the temp stable,I then inject the dts into the bowl with a syringe about 5 mls at a time and leave it there for 20 mins.:)
 
#18 ·
I understand that a variety of techniques can be successfully employed, but the question of how often remains.

It's my suspicion (and only a suspicion) that the lil' guys might need more frequent feeding than larger specimens, and if that's true, then the schedule you use for your 3" plus clams could still provide a useful reference. BTW, I do have a 1994 copy of Sprung & Delbeek's "The Reef Aquarium, Vol. 1" at my disposal, but there's no reference to clam feeding there that I can find.

Once again, thanks for helping this ole' reefer get back into the swing of things........

Regards,
Bert
 
#20 ·
Casey,

Hey thanks for the input!!

Once this tank (65 gal., 20 gal. sump, EuroReef CS6-2 skimmer, 90 lbs Fiji LR, and 4X96W PC) is a bit farther along, the info will be useful.

Right now, I'm only hosting some button polyps, some 'shrooms, a couple hardy corals (Cynarina & Lobophyllia sp.), 4 green Chromis, a Cole tang, a Coral Beauty, and a fistful of Turbos, Astrae's, blue legged Hermits plus a couple emerald green crabs. Everything is thriving so far, and I mean really thriving. But the tank is still too young and I've still got too much catching up to do for anything more challenging just yet.

None the less, a couple nice clams are very much on the agenda, so I appreciate all the help I can get.

Regards,
Bert
 
#21 ·
Hiya Tom,

Actually culturing my own Nanno.....is quite easy. I still buy some DT's but I bought culture kit from Florida Aqua Farms. (I had all those bottles of Phytoplankton at the last Atlanta Reef club Meeting.) I am using your bottle method which is the same technique referred to me in a Yahoo Group some time ago when I first researched keeping Clams. I have me a new Blue-Purple Crocea (from CBC) and it seems to enjoy the extra attention. How often do you feed your clams?

Ray
 
#22 ·
Ray1214 said:
...How often do you feed your clams???
Hey Ray, I may keep you in mind next meeting, I could definitely use a cheap source of Phyto...

As far as feeding schedules, a lot depends on the size of the clam and how much time you're willing to donate to the cause. If you don't do the phytoplankton thing, don't buy clams smaller than 3 to 4 inches (4 would be best), as we stated above, they just don't have enough surface area in there mantle to provide the nutrition necessary to survive and grow. All bivalves are dependent on suspended food particles of the correct size that they can filter out for their supplemental nutrition. This includes heterotrophic and autotrophic spp of clams as well. If the food they filter out is too big, they will expel these as clumped aggregates (when the clams occasionally pump vigorously several times in a row, they are expelling these clumped aggregates from their gills, sort of a "coughing spell".) Even if the correct size particles are present (nanoplankton), if the concentration is too high, the clams will clump these filtrates together and expel them as clumps as well (which Chris alluded to earlier when discussing the inability to target feed them with a dropper or a turkey baster). When we feed clams, we want to simulate the same conditions that they encounter in the wild, and that is relatively low concentrations pretty much over the entire day, with occasional planktonic peaks at sunrise and sunset. Ideally we would want to have some type of slow IV drip apparatus to feed the DT's to the tank, but for most of us, this is a bit much. For small clams, once a day, with just enough of the DT to barely turn the water green with the bottle apparatus is enough, although in skimmerless systems, you could just add your daily dose to the water column and let the clam get it over a 24 hr period.

Interestingly enough, commercial clam growers use yeast once or twice a week to feed the clams with great success. The use of 1/4 tsp of active live yeast that has been allowed to ferment in a volume of seawater for a few hours has been extremely successful for commercial growers for small clams in addition to the phytoplanktons. I don't know the name of the product, but there is a yeast product especially prepared for this use for commercial Tridacnidae farmers. I use the same yeast product that I use in the bread machine. The clams can use less than 3% or 4% of the actual suspended material (this would be the actual live yeast cells), so I don't think I would try the target feeding apparatus with them (Heck, I just dump it in the tank). If you use this procedure, be conservative, as it doesn't take a lot to skew your water parameters.

Bottom line? Realistically feed DT's every other day with the bottle apparatus, and go easy on the concentration of the DT's. Ideally, once a day would be optimal, and a regular addition of small doses once a day to the water column would be indicated. I feed the yeast is once a week if I remember it, but when I get really into it, twice a week of low concentration yeast (the live yeast suspension keeps well in the frige for about 2 weeks)

HTH.
 
#23 · (Edited)
I asked a pintada maxima grower (pintadas are clams used for pearl farming) how he keeps his clams healthy and growing (the clams were suspended in strings. The tank had actinics on both sides. It was a narrow and tall tank.) The pintada tank was 100 gallons but the plankton tank was 300+ gallons!!!! Attached like a sump.
Really cool.
 
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