Mussels

[C.Mydas]

lol..you mean the cat that is allergic to vaccines.. :roll Good idea but Im not in any hurry to find out what else his system cant tolerate..lol

Brians tank is a good idea...risky though...do they secrete the same 'chemical' that clams do when they are ticked? We've got some fish that eat clams...I would be worried that the chemical released would make them munch on the 'good' clams.

Any thought?

[fishypets]

I feed my tank blended clam/mussel and so far no one picks on my clams. (Knock on wood) That would suck if they develop a taste for teardrops.

[GaryP]

I have 4 clams in the tank with mine and I see the butterfly pick at the clams occasionally but I think they are just picking stuff off the shell. There was an medium sized aiptasia growing on the shell of a maxima when I got the first butterfly. I was concerned that it was going to sting the mantle of the clam. The aiptasia was gone the next AM, picked clean with surgical precision.

Clams do secrete a stress chemical when they are first introduced to a tank. This is a feeding trigger for butterflies. The solution is to put them in a fuge when first introduced, or to cover them with an eggcrate cage for a few days until they are acclimated. I have added a couple of clams since the butterfly arrived and I never had a problem. I did lose a small clam but I'm not sure if the butterfly just cleaned up the leftovers of a dead clam or whether it ate it. I suspect it was just scavenging. You know how hard it is to keep small clams alive.

[Bill S]

Just a quick note about mussels & little neck clams. Mussels are naturally found in the ocean. Little necks are an estuary species, and are found where the salinity is a bit less than natural seawater. As are oysters & blue crabs - not that you would want a blue claw in your tank! The clams likely won't do well in the long term in the higher salinities of our tanks.