Anyone successfully kept flame scallops in a NPS tank?

F

flying_dutchman

New member
I'll be setting up a NPS tank soon (august) and I was wondering with lots of phyto feeding (reeds shelfish diet) would it be possible to keep flame scallops?
Anyone successfully kept flame scallops in a NPS tank? how about oysters?
With success I mean AT LEAST one year.
thanks
 
My buddy had one in a mixed reef tank, but it didn't last more than a few weeks, it was cool while it lasted.
 
Would it be possible to keep one in a reef tank if i spot feed it phyto daily, i have about 4 bottles culturing so i should be able to always have some on hand
 
I've been itching to try one in my system for a while. My water usually has a bit of a greenish tint anyway. I figure theres enough food one might do ok. Still haven't pulled the trigger though.
 
I've had one for 3 months now. Still going strong but moved behind a rock and I have to work hard to see him.
 
I had one now for about 2 months and seems to be doing ok. It has moved to several places in the tank including under/behind rocks. Pretty cool to see though when its in a good place.
 
FWIW most are harvest with no much left on their natural lifespan. Get the smallest you can find and you may be lucky enough to have it for over a year. IIRC they only live a couple/few years.
 
I had one for quite some time in my nano aslong as you supplemented tank with phyto and rotifers should be fine. It was doing ok because it had fish nip all of its frill off and it grew new ones.

Note that when it is happy scallop is happy they will actually settle in a crevice where there is good water flow. They only move off when stressed and unfortunately scallops + power heads do not mix.

Cheers

Nam
 
I've kept a colony of nine scallops for 18 months now, in a 145 total gallon mixed NPS/ LPS system. The real trick was loading the system up with enough filter feeders to stop regular skimming. (I use cucumbers like Colochirus and Pentacta, any type of dusters, cleaner clams, mussels, sponges and tunicates, Medusa worms, porcelain/anemone crabs)
Once the skimming is being mostly managed by livestock, your own phyto and zoo plankton colonies can start to propagate. In a naturally self-feeding system, the scallops inflate to ridiculous proportions, and a couple of them that seemed to be typical flames now flash constantly! I monkeyed around with my lunar cycling and settled at a 21 day phase, and I see my flame scallops "spawn" every 8 - 12 weeks. That's pretty much the only time the skimmer runs, for about 36 hours post-spawn.
I would not recommend this method to anyone keeping SPS.
 
+2
'Same here saamath . I would love to know more about your system.

I have a large sump full of coral rubble that keeps nutrients in line for the most part. I have Cheato in my dump bucket that helps keep the phosphates down but the sump prevents turf algae from growing.

I have tried to make thinks as natural as possible with no skimming but the inescapable elephant in the room is that there are still pumps in the system. There is lots of propeller action chopping up the plankton.

I have been using powdered food but I am building a 6” diameter, 6 foot tall artemia tower. I hope that it will generate enough to help feed the tank. If I'm lucky, I will get 2 gallons per day doled out at 1 pint every 3 hours. I am an experimenter and a fair amount of them fail however.

I have designed a reasonably high volume non-traumatic pump but that needs a good bit of development work.

So what do you do to get the water flow up where you need it? Actually, I/we have a lot of question about how you do what you are doing. Please fill in some more information for us and if you have any pictures and/or video, please add that as well!
 
I've had a flame scallop in my 10 gallon nano for close to 4 months now, and it's settled pretty well and looks healthy with every other day feedings of phytoplankton. I also have mussels, and a feather duster in there as well that are doing great. I have two gorgonia (yellow finger and purple frilly) coming this Wednesday to go in the tank as well.

With a good number of filter feeders to feed on the phyto, so it doesn't fowl the tank with almost daily feedings, I think it's quite possible to get a flame scallop to thrive. I'm not calling mine a success because it has only been 4 months, but I think we're on to something.

I'd give it a try!
 
The quick answer to pumps chopping up your plankton is to make a dedicated column that is lift-drawn via a small top-mounted pump (I use a 3/4" PVC with both ends capped, and an aqualifter pump to suction draw). The basic idea is the same as a continuous-siphon overflow, but it acts like an elevator for your fragile planktons! Just create a small spout on a declining 45 degree angle that leads to your tank from the top of the column, and feed the return line from the lift pump back to the sump/fuge.
 
Wow! That is very nice. Sorry for all the questions ....but I guess that's why we're here.

So you do get the plankton to propagate in the tank (actually, like you said earlier)? With the higher amount of plankton in the tank, do you find that you need less water motion? Is it close to zero? Can enough plankton swim to the NPS to make up for all of the water motion that is so highly touted? Do you keep Dendronephthya and Gorgonia?

Some of the conventional wisdom says that if you have fish, they will quickly consume all of the plankton in the tank. Do you have fish? Is there a lot of nocturnal plankton that comes out when the lights go off?

I know that if you are going in such a different direction, you or learning as you go and unless you are rolling in dough, you might not be ready to produce evidence of a "Show Tank" but could we please see some pics ....any think?
 
I'm an analog fossil with no digital camera better than a cell phone, so the process takes a minute. pics forthcoming.

My fish load consists of ecsenius blennies, rainfordi gobies, priolepis gobies, and 'little fish' in general. If they are making a dent on my plankton pop., I'm not noticing, and they're more than worth it.

Since the system is mixed LPS/NPS, and I keep inverts and fish there is flow sufficient to maintain particulate suspension almost constantly during all of the daylight photo-period, and intermittently for short intervals during the night. I don't want a heavy accumulation of sediment to coat any of my filter feeders or add any extremely detrimental phosphates to the system. I'm LOOSELY basing this model on Tyree's cryptic method. If you haven't familiarized yourself with that model, stop listening to me and read Tyree's CMAT book. It will teach you the cryptic ins and outs. So, there are three long periods during dusk, midnight, and pre-dawn where the plankton are free to migrate as they will, and they do. I don't think that without the flow enough of them would naturally drift to some of the areas where I put my corals for showcasing, so it seems to be all around the thing to do.
 
Sorry for the delay in getting back, we're closing on a house and moving into it, so I'm in full-scale prep mode for that move.
To get to the most common question about my methods, flow in the display system is accomplished with 4 controlled power-heads during the 'flow periods.' I know that this is likely detrimental to my plankton population, but during these times, it's only a portion of the overall population in the display that's subjected to mechanical flow. I have to be willing to sacrifice what I surmise is a small fraction of the overall population because my love for LPS demands it.
I have a 58-gallon display (probably 30 gal actual vol) tank that has reef lighting and parameters. Its volume of water is completely replaced via return pump flow once an hour through a 240-gallon (probably 90 gal actual vol) open water sump, filtered through live rock that has been arranged and stocked in accordance with Tyree's CMAT model. Can't stress enough how good of a resource his books are!!!
During the 'still periods' of the night, the lifter pump engages as the in-tank power-heads disengage. For those periods, the lifter provides the only flow in the display system, adding a slow stream of plankton-rich water drawn from my 75-gallon (probably 30 gal actual vol) refugium. The introduced plankton want to congregate in safe zones, necessitating the 'stir phases' of the night cycle. During these are short bursts of the power-heads just to add turbulence and make the plankton re-orient and move.
The refugium is on a reverse daylight scheme, stocked on one end with various macroalgaes and filter feeders and on the other end with a dedicated 'plankton panel' made of a self-fabricated acrylic frame. Inside the frame I can clamp horticultural screen with a 20 micron porosity. I know it's a little large, but anything smaller just seems to fill up with sediment rapidly. The frame allows pretty much anything plankton to move through, but keeps all of the predatory creatures out. It also makes for a very, very slow transfer area at the back of the refugium that is always crawling with anemone and porcelain crabs. If they ever wandered away, I'd probably get nervous and add a reactor to drip new plankton..... but that hasn't happened yet, and it's been 32 months since I finalized this system (the most recent nineteen of them with the same batch of flame scallops!).
Lord knows this move has me paranoid about everything!
Since I'll be on the move I may not be in the forums much for a while, so just PM any further questions so that I get the email alert.
Hope I've given you some ideas to work with.
 
I've moved a lot so I know what your going through. When you can, the pictures would really help. Love to better understand your system.
 
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