Elegance or clam

I am trying to decide between an elegance coral or clam for my cube. I am a bit nervous to try either because of the low volume of water, but the tank is stable, the rock, coral, etc. came from an established tank, and it has been running without any hiccups for a while now.

Does anyone who has had either an elegance or a clam have any input. It would be greatly appreciated.

 

What kind of lighting are you running?

 

What type of clam are you getting or thinking of getting?

 

You can do either. The elegance will require lots of food or "dirty" water.

 

So I was looking at your build thread, very nice nano you have there.

Looks like the ricordia are right on top under a LED? Is the fixture supporting their growth because a clam may need more intense lighting.

If you want to try a clam, go with a Derasa, larger than 2 inches. The easiest clam IMO and not as light demanding as the Maxima or Crocea.

Personally I would try an easier LPS before you spend the money on a Elegance coral, just a thought. Elegance like a established system IMO, yours looks too clean and new.

 

^^ +1 to above post. I would try a fogspawn, hammer, torch etc. If you do a clam, a dereasa would be best or even a squamosa need less light than the brighter colors of clams.

 

The PAR values just under the bulb is charted around 350 - 400. The Ricordea are growing well at every level of the tank, from top to bottom. The bottom should be running PAR values around 50 - 100.

 

How dirty are we talking? Is this why Elegance used to be considered hardy and are now often difficult to keep?

 

It has been staying fairly clean. The spotlight effect of the LED seems to be keeping the coraline algae off the glass. The substrate looks new because I just added some more crushed coral to the tank.

 

elegence corals can send tenticles out quite a bit and need to have a lot of room, otherwise it will sting the other corals!