Grow Your Own

From January, 1995 (update #23)

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Until last year, Great Lakes scientists had been frustrated by their inability to raise large numbers of zebra mussel larvae for experimental use. Then, at the Fourth International Zebra Mussel Conference, Henry Vanderploeg reported that he and colleagues from Ann Arbor's Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab had been successful using specialized algae as a food source. Now marine malacologist Brad Baldwin of Rutgers University has come up with a straightforward procedure for culturing veligers. Baldwin, who is studying the larvae of zebra mussels and several related bivalves, recently submitted a short article describing his procedure to Dreissena!, a publication of New York Sea Grant's Zebra Mussel Information Clearinghouse. Baldwin said that the keys to the process are "ripe adults, good water and good food." Baldwin said that under his lab conditions, strains of Synechococcus and Nannochloris are cultured easily, are of appropriate size, and support rapid growth. Other investigators, he said, are successfully using strains of Chlorella and even estuarine algae such as Isochrysis. "Anyone who can follow a recipe can rear larvae, with a bit of practice," Baldwin said. "I've just modified the simple methods established by marine scientists who have worked for decades on similar animals. It turns out that zebra mussels are really not difficult to raise. "I would also like to dispel the notion that you need highly specialized skills, equipment or food sources to culture these animals. To be successful you do need some skill but you don't need a graduate degree. You just need practice." Baldwin will be talking about his procedure at the upcoming Fifth Annual Zebra Mussel Conference in Toronto.

ID: 199501-17.

The Zebra Mussel Update was a 4- to 8-page quarterly national newsletter published by the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute from May 1990 through May 1997. The ZMU documented the spread of the zebra mussel -- an exotic nuisance mussel -- through North America's freshwater environments, especially the Great Lakes, and on efforts to control it.