Diet
The silver carp is a filter feeder, and possesses a remarkably specialized apparatus capable of filtering particles as small as 4 micrometers (µm). The gill rakers are fused into a sponge-like filter, and an epibranchial organ secretes mucus which assists in trapping small particles. A strong buccal pump forces water through this filter. Silver carp, like all Hypophthalmichthys species, have no stomachs; they are thought to feed more or less constantly, largely on phytoplankton; they also consume zooplankton and detritus. Because of their plankton-feeding habits, there is concern they will compete with native planktivorous fishes, which in North America include paddlefish (Polyodon spathula), gizzard shad (Dorosoma cepedianum), and young fish of almost all species.
Because they feed on plankton, they are sometimes successfully used for controlling water quality, especially in the control of noxious blue-green algae (cyanobacteria). However, these efforts are sometimes not successful. Certain species of blue-green algae, notably the often toxic Microcystis, can pass through the gut of silver carp unharmed, and pick up nutrients while in the gut. Thus, in some cases, blue-green algae blooms have been exacerbated by silver carp. Also, Microcystis has been shown to produce more toxins in the presence of silver carp. These carp, which have natural defenses to their toxins, sometimes can contain enough algal toxins in their systems to become hazardous to eat.
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Famous quotes containing the word diet:
“I learned from my two years’ experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one’s necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength.... Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Television programming for children need not be saccharine or insipid in order to give to violence its proper balance in the scheme of things.... But as an endless diet for the sake of excitement and sensation in stories whose plots are vehicles for killing and torture and little more, it is not healthy for young children. Unfamiliar as yet with the full story of human response, they are being misled when they are offered perversion before they have fully learned what is sound.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“The pills are a mother, but better,
every color and as good as sour balls.
I’m on a diet from death.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)