anybody tried oysters?

[deputydog95]

i have large oyster beds in the canal behind my house.

they don't seem to require much as they're under docks, the water is crappy, some even live above the low tide line.

i have some big empty areas in the back of my that can't be seen. these oysters are not that good looking, so i wouldn't want to put them out front. they tend to grow in large clusters as well.

i figured they might be a good condition for two reasons.

one, they're filter feeders. might be good at soaking up some extra nutrients in the water.


two, i'm paying a small fortune for the DT oyster eggs. I was thinking that if i broke off a few small colonies off the sea wall, i may have free oyster eggs on a regular basis i have seen a weird growth spike in my tank since i started adding the DT oyster eggs once a week or so. Problem is that it's $20 for a tiny little container.

am i on the right track here? any problems i may run into?

 

[mbbuna]

the only thing i see is, when they spawn they will produce a ton of sperm and eggs all at once,and that will most likely foul your tank. and there not going to spawn on a regular bases, i don't know for sure but i think they only spawn once a year

 

[deputydog95]

i can only assume they spawn more often than that, the way they reproduce on my sea wall. i go out and knock them off with a shovel every few months. they're really dangerous as they're razor sharp. if you fall on them you're in a for a good slicing with a probable infection.

 

[jwalters103]

im pretty sure you can iduce spawning in oysters the same way that you can in clams. all you would have to do is dissect one, mash up the gonads and add it to the water----the other oysters should spawn immediately

 

[jwalters103]

btw, that should read---induce spawning

 

[grimmjohn]

I wonder if oysters would be as ill fated as most flame scallops due to lack of food particles in the water?

 

[critterkeeper]

I'd bet the barn that they'll starve, then die, then maybe crash your tank.

On top of that, if they did spawn, they'd produce a lot of gametes, which only live a short time (maybe minutes to a few hours). Then they die, and maybe crash your tank...

Sorry for the bad news

 

[jwalters103]

probably right, if you want to try, add a couple oysters at a time. and see how they do to try and figure out how many your system could support

 

[deputydog95]

that sounds like good advice.

 

[rharr21]

I took a couple of oysters home from a bar where I was eating them on the 1/2 shell and put them in my tank a few years ago. Despite coming out of a bag in a cooler full of ice they did fine for over a year until I accidently got an octo that ate every thing in my tank. I tried it again about a year ago with some oysters I knocked of a dock in Pensacola, Fla and they only lasted a few weeks because there were several baby stone crabs that were hiding in them. I could never catch the crabs so I tossed the whole lot.

 

[organism]

another thing to worry about would be the probability of them having some disease or microbe that they could bring into your tank...

 

[jwalters103]

maybe so, but you take that chance with everything you put in your tank, even your hands