eng Science and Education Publishing Journal of Aquatic Science 2013-08-03 1 1 31 38 10.12691/jas-1-2-2 JAS2013122 article Adjei-Boateng Daniel adjeiboat@yahoo.com 1 Wilson Gow James 2 Department of Fisheries and Watershed Management, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana Zoology Department, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland The age and growth of the freshwater clam Galatea paradoxa from the Volta River estuary, Ghana was estimated during a two-year study using surface growth rings, length-frequency distributions and tagging recapture experiment. Mean lengths at ages 1 to 8 years were 19.4, 28.4, 37.1, 44.1, 49.5, 55.5, 65.6 and 73.1 mm, respectively. The von Bertalanffy growth curves obtained by three the methods were: L_t = 80.4(1-e^-0.17t), L_t = 105.7(1-e^-0.14t) and L_t = 104.5(1-e^-0.16t) for surface rings, length-frequency distributions and tagging recapture respectively. All the age determination methods were successful in estimating the age of G. paradoxa indicating that surface ring counting is an appropriate and reasonably accurate method for simple and rapid age estimation in this species. The estimated growth curves obtained from surface rings, length-frequency distributions and the tagging-recapture experiment revealed that the methods provided similar estimates of growth rates. http://pubs.sciepub.com/jas/1/2/2/jas-1-2-2.pdf surface rings tagging-recapture length-frequency distributions growth curves