Quagga Mussels Feeding--Speeded Up 10x

Speeded up 10 times, this video emphasizes that quagga mussels are active animals--much more active than washed up shells on a beach would suggest.

Quagga mussels and zebra mussels feed by filtering tiny plant and animal plankton out of the water and extracting the nutrients they need. Material they don't digest is wrapped in mucus and expelled. This "pseudofeces" is rich in nutrients like phosphorus.

Each tiny mussel filters a quart of water each day. That vigorous activity, abetted by circulating water, has effectively filtered the entire volume of water in Lake Michigan and other Great Lakes.

In the Great Lakes, invasive quagga and zebra mussels deposit their waste in the relatively narrow bottom areas near shore, where the mussels live. This has caused two profound changes to the lakes: It has dramatically cleared the water, and it has concentrated nutrients like phosphorus near shore. As a result, phosphorus concentrations have decreased off-shore and increased near shore, and sunlight penetrates deeper into the water.

Among the many consequences to the lake's food web are a major shift of energy sources (phytoplankton) away from open waters, where they would ultimately support trout, salmon, and whitefish, and an increase in nutrients like phosphorus available to algae growing near shore.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• quagga mussels
• zebra mussels
• algae
• phosphorus
• Lake Michigan
• Great Lakes
• food webs

[mcrynes21]

Invasive species! Eliminate them!

[driverain2]

@bettydaw1970 I see National Acadamy of Science in your future !!!

[hydrogetone]

@gasattackmanliveca then please answer this... When i was eating an oyster their was a tiny crab inside of the oyster :D .. I almost died ^^

[gasattackmanliveca]

@prettydall they eat phyto plankton/algea

[Faztlan]

@bettydaw1970 hahaha, death to these tyrants! -TX

[kingslayer06]

@prettydall

I myself don't know much of these creatures,

but your story is quite nice and pleasing. Nice of you to help. xD

[prettydall]

Hi, thks for the video. I need ALOT of info about freshwater mussels. I found a bunch that were thrown out on the side of a road and decided to put them in my 40 gal aquarium(since it was empty) My smallest one is about the size of your biggest. They are alive but barely move at all. I have only fed them crumbled fish food for the past month. There is one i call squirt every time you pick it up, he quirts water in your face... There is not much info on the net for care on them.Any advice?

[bettydaw1970]

these cocksuckers have fucked up lake mead in las vegas..like my scientific jargon :)