Mussel husbandry

I am in the process of starting work on setting up a wet lab for the study of native unionid mussels, i know this is a fish board but has had any experience with dealing with housing and maintaining freshwater mussels?

Yes but your best bet is to contact people directly involved with husbandry or propagation with any of the labs and/or universities in the southeast, Wisconsin, and Missouri, and more importantly someone in your state. Long term holding and low mortality grow out boils down to a lot of water exchange and movement and a lot of food. I saw some very interesting grow out set ups this year that were essentially PVC cups with an upweller in a 5 gallon bucket that had tremendous growth at high density. I'd suggest you head on over to the Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society webpage and contact the proper committee member.

Drewpy,

I don't know where you're located (location isn't in your profile), but at the June meeting of the Southeastern Wisconsin Native Fish Club, we're going to have a speaker from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources talk to us about native mussels. If you're in the area, it might be a good talk to make. I'll post more info in the "Midwest and Canada" forum as the date approaches. Welcome to the forum!

Brian

I'm not sure if this is pertinent but I've had pretty good luck with Asian clams in my aquariums as long as I don't filter the aquarium water and allow a layer of mulm to stay on the bottom. They would seem to either they eat the mulm or the protozoa that live in the mulm.

I'm not sure if this is pertinent but I've had pretty good luck with Asian clams in my aquariums as long as I don't filter the aquarium water and allow a layer of mulm to stay on the bottom. They would seem to either they eat the mulm or the protozoa that live in the mulm.

im in middle tennesse

The test run of having corbicula in the lab worked, we proved that we could hold them in captivity, now we are in the stage of building a new lab off campus in order to set up a wet lab and hopefully house multiple species, the end result is to test the effects of the fly ash from the east TN fly ash spill at the Emory River

right now we are looking to use paper pond shells Utterbackia imbecillis

You're in Middle TN? You realize you're within an hour or so of Jim Layzer at Tennessee Tech? Have you been working with anyone at TWRA like Don Hubbs or with TVA? I would have imagined the first thing they would have said if you were looking to build something from scratch is to go see some of the TTU set ups. Or the state one somewhere in central TN...or Monte McGregor in Frankfort...The wheel doesn't need to be reinvented, it exists, and very close to you. You may be interested in NC State's or White Sulphur Spring Hathery's mussel facilities also since they do similar sounding short and long term toxicological studies on mussels.

You're in Middle TN? You realize you're within an hour or so of Jim Layzer at Tennessee Tech? Have you been working with anyone at TWRA like Don Hubbs or with TVA? I would have imagined the first thing they would have said if you were looking to build something from scratch is to go see some of the TTU set ups. Or the state one somewhere in central TN...or Monte McGregor in Frankfort...The wheel doesn't need to be reinvented, it exists, and very close to you. You may be interested in NC State's or White Sulphur Spring Hathery's mussel facilities also since they do similar sounding short and long term toxicological studies on mussels.

Yeah, Currently attending MTSU,

I have been collecting/ disussing this project with Mckinney and the TWRA folks.

The state has the Gallatin facility with the raceways, if that is the site you are talking about.

I am interested in seeing some of Layzers set ups, I just have not made it out towards Cookeville yet.

(OK, i cheated and saw you have worked with Layzer)


It looks like we will be using a living stream set-up

Edited by drewpy, 27 May 2009 - 03:21 PM.

Yeah that is the facility. I knew it was somewhere in that area, the steam plant in Gallatin should have rung a bell. I may have a few pictures of one of our propagation set ups. Not really for long term holding, kind of opposite of what you'd use. Any pictures or literature you can find on gutter systems, bucket systems, or flupsy's should give you a ton of information. I was really impressed by some recent presentations about the various small bucket flupsy systems. Cheap grow out, but also makes nice contained replicates for expiremental designs (blocking, treatments, covariates...). Raceways and small versions (i.e. in living stream tanks) have had some nice long term holding. There have been various species kept at Minor Clark in KY for pushing a decade. Utterbackia certainly doesn't seem like a species hard to grow/keep.

Tox stuff with mussels in general is embryonic and I hope things progress beyond the same four species. Plenty of coal fines and larger particles in depositional areas of the Clinch, Powell, Big South Fork, even upper reaches of the Emory and there are certainly mussels. Covariates galore! As a resource manager, I'm very interested in being able to find an LC50 or some acute/chronic mean value for regulated chemicals like ammonia, chlorine, copper, arsenic, etc. and being able to related that to data I collect.

im in middle tennesse

I'm in NC, lots of asian clams here in the wild.

Tom Watters at Ohio State University is another person to contact.

http://www.fws.gov/m...-11-R_2006.html

http://www.biosci.oh...molluscs/OSUM2/


There is great research being done at his lab.

we have got them up and running, but the heat seems to be taking its toll on individuals, the smaller pond shells seem to be more likely to succcumb to the temps during the day, 28.9C is the highest recorded so far, the adults appear to be doing well, no gaping or signs of stress.

the 11 gallon tubs are being filtered by a medium sized aquarium filter and an aerator has been put into place incase the main filter clogs with sand. seven pondshell mussels were placed into each tub, and i have been feeding them ~1.2ml of food per day of Nanno 3600 as per a feeding regime from a source that used a flow table, seems to be awfully high for a self contained tank set up, i think i need to do some more searching as to how to change the feeding to reduce costs and waste.

Edited by drewpy, 18 August 2010 - 05:06 PM.