Clam Lighting

[MACC]

Im new to all of this and dont know anything, so thanks for your patience...I got an oceanic biocube (29 ga.) for Christmas and I want to get some clams (pref. the max.). Is this tank able to sustain this?? It has 2 power compact fluorescent lamps, 10,000 K and Actinic Lunar Blue(lamps are 2x36 dual power compacts???) , Moon Glow LED lights Thanks for your help...MACC

[jmaneyapanda]

Unfortunately, my vote is no. The lighting is not adequate.

[MACC]

any way to modify this thing???

[jmaneyapanda]

Im not sure of the design, but think it has a built in hood. Most lights that are pwoerful enough generate a lot of heat, which would be bad in this situation. You might want to look into t%, but I not sure if it's feasible.

[Peabody]

Unfortunately other than scraping the top altogether, you're probably out of luck. Those lights wouldn't sustain the lowest light Tridacnid. For a maxima, you'd likely want a 150w Metal Halide bulb at least. Sorry!

[kitestir9]

There are a couple of places that offer retrofits for this hood. Right now there is a kit that can be added to bring it up to 144watts.

It adds 2 more 36 watt bulbs in the existing hood. You can search around for them or drop me a pm and I can try and find them for you.

[JamesJR]

I have been in the hobby for a long time and I have worked in the retail end for a few years too. I wouldn't try to keep clams in this tank. I hate to rain on your parade but I would hate for you to lose clams and bang your head against the wall to find out what I have concluded.

PC lighting is not effective for keeping clams. I have seen people fail to keep clams with pc lights time and time again. There are people who may have success with them, but they are few and far between and even if they have had them for a year or two I still wouldn't count it as success. I am obviosly biased as I hate PC lighting, but it isn't without reason. I would stick to soft corals and lower light requiring stony corals.