Placement of Clam

[fishiee]

I have a crocea clam on my sand bed and am debating on where i should place it: leave it on the sandbed, in poistion 1 or in position 2 on the live rock. My tank is 14 inches deep and currently has 4x24 watts worth of of T5 tubes. The main issue here is light. I was also thinking of a fourth option: construct an LED pannel with the specific light specrta (red, green-blue and blue) the clam needs and aim it directly at the clam.

The qualms i have will be:

clam on the sand bed will not have enough light

the clam in position 1 will block off the light shining on the rock underneath. i am planning to put mushroom corals there

clam in position 2 is very near (should actually touch) my button corals. wonder if anything bad could come out from there.

the fifth and last option will be to chop off the coral in the circle. it is 'dying' so as to say and put the clam in its place. what do you think are the chances of its survival? It was my first coral which started my interest on marine tanks. (poached from St. John's Island). It got into this condition due to 1. inadequate lighting (i used a 24w table lamp at first) and 2. using excessive epoxy (the red one, the one which you have to mix). the mistake cost me the lives of all my livestock except for this one. my tank did not have a protein skimmer then.

[yikai]

firstly, please resize ur pictures in future...took me very long to load =x maybe its my com just laggy.

placing ur clam on position 1 is fine, mushroom corals dun need much light and the shade from the clam wont really matter. however, how stable will it be at position 1? looks very precarious.

position 2 is also fine, but regarding lighting, u should figure that out. clams need good lighting. i dun think there will be much problems if it touches the button polyps. they dun have much stinging capacity IMO.

Removing ur ball looking coral (i think its a favia? not sure) will also be good. it looks dead to me, can see the skeleton.

[iskay]

Choose wisely as whatever position you choose finally, the clam will bore into the rock and it'll be near impossible to remove.

[MarcoVan]

According to my friends and my book,

as long as your clam's mantle is opening and is reacting well when you switch off/on your lights, your clam's fine if not comfortable at the current position it is in.

Any movement or frequent shift of it will cause it to stress and eventually die.

I got this advice from my kahkis, Ian, Jun Kai and Nimrod and sincerely thank them for it as I am still a proud owner of 2 clams in a one feet cube. So fishiee dude, you are actually quite safe from the way the clam looks in your picture (:

Keep it up,

Marc

[fishiee]

According to my friends and my book,

as long as your clam's mantle is opening and is reacting well when you switch off/on your lights, your clam's fine if not comfortable at the current position it is in.

Any movement or frequent shift of it will cause it to stress and eventually die.

I got this advice from my kahkis, Ian, Jun Kai and Nimrod and sincerely thank them for it as I am still a proud owner of 2 clams in a one feet cube. So fishiee dude, you are actually quite safe from the way the clam looks in your picture (:

Keep it up,

Marc

Thank you so much for all your comments and encouragement. I am trying out position 2; supporting the clam with a glass jar (will monitor in case it falls off). I will give it 2 weeks to glue itself to the rock. If all else fails, i will put it back on the floor.

[Achilles Tang]

Put the clams where they can get maximum light. Most are light starved unless you use MHs. Since your tank is next to sunlight.... have them facing the sunlight to solve this problem.

You can let them anchor themselves to a piece of flat rock. You can then move them to face you at night or when you have guests around.

I trust that you also will provide them good calcium levels to help them grow. Clams absord a lot of calcium when they grow.

Clams will die suddenly if things are not balanced for them... you don't get any warning signs... so stability of the right parameters for them is so important.

Good luck!

[matthewpoh]

I keep my clam at the bottom of the tank.

They seem to grow and be at peace there.