The importance of live bacteria in food

[Paul B]

Has anyone tried to acclimate live clams to a sump and then " harvest them as needed?" Most of the clams and oysters in my neighbourhood comes from the pacific off the BC coast. The other option would be to have a small cold water tank similar to the food store . I also think that most these would stay alive for a day or two in the fridge.
The other option would be to just invite the fish over for a regular clam vongole every week.

Unfortunately clam vongole or linguini with clams is about my favorite meal so it doesn't last long in my house. You can keep live clams in your fridge for almost a week and they will stay live. If some die, freeze them.
I have put them in my tank many times and they will not live more than a few days or maybe a week. The water is too warm and unless your tank looks like a sewer, they will starve. Here where I collect them I also SCUBA dive and the viability is about a foot or a foot and a half. That is due to the life we have in the water here which the clams depend on. They won't live in a tropical tank.

 

[Axelrodi202]

I have been thinking about the role of probiotics consumed from food lately.

In the freshwater fish breeding world, the old school breeders all know live foods give the best results in terms of yield and health. Even frozen it seems does not fully compare. This isn't an issue of palatability, as it occurs even between live and frozen foods (elicit similar feeding response) and in hardy species where the fish will eat anything you throw at them. I've long suspected it has to do with the gut-associated microbes present in live foods.

Thus I hope the new trend is towards commercial foods (both prepared and frozen) to include probiotics that are actually viable by the time they reach the fish.

 

[Paul B]

Probiotics are very good in regard to health, but in regard to immunity, fish also need pathogens which would not be in probiotics.