Pic of my crocea...

[Sea Dragon]

I have had this guy for about 8 months now; bought it at Harbor Aquatics. It was 2 1/2" when I got him and is probably a little over 3" now.

http://users.aol.com/snoopylinux/crocea.jpg

[herefishiefishie]

Beautiful clam. I really like the pattern of stripes in the mantle. One-half inch of growth (I asssume length) is about right for 8 months, perhaps even excellent, for that amount of time. I do not recall ever seeing a pattern of longitudinal lines in the center portion of the clam like that. Very cool.

I commend you. You must be doing something right. :D

tell us a little about your care methods for this creature. We wopuld like to know your method of dosing calcium, your lighting setup, and everything else.:D

[Sea Dragon]

I should note that the 1/2" growth is in total length of the clam, including the mantle. The shell has about 1/4" of new growth around the edges.

Hmm, how I take care of it...well it's been around. For the first 6 months it was in my 75 under 440 watts of VHO. That tank doesn't have much of a calcium demand because it's mostly softies, but I did add kalk in small amounts and some calcium chloride. Phytoplankton was added now and then too. It did fine in there but didn't grow much. I ran into a problem when I added a keyhole angel to the tank - he nipped at the mantle of the clam. :( Had to use a small piece of acrylic to protect the clam until I could set up a new tank which was...

A 29 gallon with a single 250 watt iwasaki bulb in a spiderlight reflector. The clam was really happy to go in there! I put it on the bottom but it still gets lots of light. It seems to open wider and the colors changed a bit, with more green now than blue. Shell growth seems to be much faster in this tank, with most of the increase in size coming in the two months that it's been in the 29. I've been doing a lot of water changes on this tank and adding calcium chloride daily to keep those levels up. The routine is a major drag though, so I'm now starting to drip kalk...I think this will work better in the long run.

You can see the clam in the bottom right hand side of this pic that was taken about a month ago.

http://users.aol.com/snoopylinux/29full.jpg

[MtnDewMan]

Nice looking clam there Sea Dragon ... Would like to see that kind of growth on mine in the next 8 months. I see you have yours on the sand bed. Not up in the rock work where Croceas like to be. I am trying to figure out how to get my new Crocea to attach up in the rock work without falling over. There isn't a lot of support in the rocks to liberally put rocks around it so it doesn't move much. Maybe I could epoxy down some small reef plugs around it??? I hope it attaches in the next couple of days.

Again, nice clam :)

[Sea Dragon]

If you look at the pic closely you may notice part of a round block under the clam. I bought it attached to that, so it probably thinks it's on a rock. What you can try (if it doesn't manage on it's own) is putting a flat rock under the clam on the bottom of the tank and then glue that rock to the other rockwork after it's attached.