New Clam and Par/Placement question

[Kyle Sicard]

Hello,
I recently picked up this tiger maxima clam the other week and its quickly becoming my favorite piece in the tank. It's about a 4"-4.5" clam and I'm wondering about par levels for the clam in the long term. I've been in the hobby for some time now and I've always placed clams on the sand bed like so many others do. But I'm wondering why that is since clams generally do best in fairly intense light, it seems contradictive to place a clam in the lowest par area of our tanks. Currently I have my lights set to put 200 par on the sand bed. My question is that will that be enough light in the long run to support this clam? If not does anybody have any recommendations for large frag plugs or rocks made specifically for clams so that I can let the clam attach to the smaller rock and then place that rock somewhere up higher?

 

[mcarroll]

Much like corals, what they can tolerate in terms of low light does depend on the specific clam and local conditions of flow and nutrients, but 30,000 lux is the rule of thumb I use for how much light. That's around 600 PAR.