CATDOLL : CATDOLL: What do river clams eat? How to raise them? I picked up a river clam.

The food of clams is mainly unicellular algae, protozoa and organic debris, such as rotifers, flagellates, green euglena, green algae, scenedesmus, boat-shaped algae, dinoflagellates, tetrahedral algae, spindle diatoms, rhabdocystis, crustacean debris and plant leaves. The most easily digestible are diatoms. They mainly filter plankton, bacteria and detritus in the water, and the size of the food is about 20-80 microns.

Clams cannot actively chase food, but rely on the opening and closing of the shell, the swinging of the cilia on the inner side of the mantle and the gill cilia to create water flow, and the food enters the clam body with the water. The food enters the mantle cavity with the water, and the particles move upward along the gill filaments to the base of the gills, and then move forward to the lip. After being selected by the lip, small particles enter the mouth, and large particles move backward from the edge of the inner gills, enter the mantle mark to the rear end at the intersection of the two gills, and then the two shells close and are discharged from the body.

Additional information:

Mussels are dioecious, with gonads located around the dorsal intestine of the foot, grape-shaped glands, milky white testes, and light yellow ovaries. The reproductive duct is continuous, and the gonadal opening is very small, located at the rear and lower part of the renal aperture.

The reproductive season of clams is generally in summer. The sperm and eggs are fertilized in the gill cavity of the outer gills until the larvae of the hook shell are formed. Due to the adhesion of the mother, the fertilized eggs will not be washed out by the water flow, but will remain in the gill cavity for development. Therefore, the gill cavity of the outer gills is also called the brood pouch.

The fertilized egg undergoes completely unequal cleavage (spiral type) and develops into a blastocyst, which forms a gastrula by the method of externalization and invagination of the scutellaria, and then develops into a larva, which hibernates in the gill cavity. In the spring of the following year, the larvae hatch and develop into the larvae of the river mussel (equivalent to the disc larvae of other bivalves).

The larvae have well-developed closing muscles, and the ventral margins of the shell each have a strong hook with teeth. There is a sticky filament in the center of the ventral part, called the foot thread. The side margins of the shell have bristles, which have sensory functions. The larvae have a mouth but no anus, and can swim by opening and closing the double shell.

The river clams in my home are bigger than half of my keyboard. They laid eggs last year. The fatter ones are females, and the ones with flatter edges are males. I don't know whether you are a triangular fan clam or an ordinary river clam, but I have raised both. Don't use sand to raise them. Use sticky soil. If you use sand, they will die in a few days. And if you want to raise pearls, I can also tell you how to do it. I'm a serious expert, haha

Last year during the National Day, I asked a friend for a few river clams to play with. I don’t know what they eat. Anyway, I dug some sand from the yard and put it in a basin, then washed the sand several times with water. I kept it at home for a whole winter. I remember changing the water every half a month in winter. This year, I put it in the shade of the yard and changed the water every two or three days. I haven’t fed it anything. I saw that it seemed to grow a little... Just now, I grabbed a handful of white flour and sprinkled it in the basin... Then I saw that those guys moved after a while. As for whether they ate food, I don’t know... Because it’s summer now, I’m afraid that the white flour I sprinkled in will go bad, so I plan to change the water for it tomorrow morning. It’s just a communication with you, sharing experience, after all, this thing is very rare, hehe...

Eat plankton in the water

Only sand dug from the river will work, so don't touch it normally.