Freshwater Clams are in AZ canals!

We went geocaching along the Phoenix canal system and the little ones found many freshwater clams along the sidewalk.  Apparently the city cleans the canal every so often and dumps the rocks along the sides.  The clams get scooped up along with the rocks.  We picked up several and put them in a fish tank to see if they would open and perhaps be alive.  None of them were so it must have been too long since they cleaned the canal.

A living freshwater clam can work like a filter in your fish tank to keep the water clean.  Clams filter food (plankton and other microscopic sea creatures) and detritus from the water to get their nutrients.  The detritus causes them to form pearls.


    de·tri·tus  (d-trts)
    n. pl. detritus
    1. Loose fragments or grains that have been worn away from rock.
    2.  a. Disintegrated or eroded matter:
         b. Accumulated material; debris:          ( from: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/detritus)


A clam is a mussel.   They have a foot they dig into the sand to stay in place under the water.  They can dig 1 inch to several inches.  Mussels are classified by how far they dig into the ground and what kind of material they dig into.  The shell has 3 layers, the top one is called, mother-of-pearl because it is a coating of pearl material. 

Iridescence in Pearls (Photos: Public Domain)