fresh water clams

[erc2995]

5 Small Golden clams aquarium filter koi clam pond - eBay (item 260576551123 end time Apr-03-10 21:33:02 PDT)

hello all i was wondering if these are as good as claimed for an aquarium? what if i have gravel and not sand? (see above link)
i am also interested in some ghost shrimp or cherry shrimp and maybe a snail
figured it would be a fun way to have life tank cleaners

 

[Sluder4]

Well snails get the job done in cleaning and clams filter extermly well. About to get some for myself. Good buy imo.

 

[ValRasbora]

I used to have a fw clam, he was pretty cool. I think they look nicer than snails too I got mine for free from a fellow hobbyist a while back. If you're going to get just one snail and you only want one, get an apple snail, you need 2 to breed them unlike pond snails (stupid things! They keep coming back into my tank somehow!).

 

[Mturner615]

I never had much luck with freshwater clams because I always had gravel for my substrate, and the clams couldn't accurately bury themselves to hide.

It really depends on what's in the tank that the clams are going into. Some fish are more prone to breaking open a clam for an easy meal, so you might wanna do some research.

When I had mine, I had the clams in my 29, and since my gravel was too large for the clams to bury themselves, my mollies pretty much spent that entire week trying to get them open.

As far as efficiency goes, I think they're relatively efficient at cleaning the water, but they don't do anything really for algae. I always had great luck with the apple snails. I always got a large apple and a small apple, and then occasionally they'd breed, and I'd just give the baby snails back to the LFS, or, now that I have turtles, I feed the extra snails to them.