Acclimate Clams to lighting...

[carolinareefs]

I am currently running 220W of PC lighting on my tank. (Don't worry, no clams yet) For christmas, we are building a canopy with 2-250W 14K Halides and 2 54W HO Actinics. I will have to acclimate my current corals (mostly softies) to the new lighting.

I am also getting some gift certs so I can get some clams for the tank.

Should I wait until my tank inhabitants are fully acclimated and my new halides are on a normal 8-12 hour photoperiod before introducing clams? Or would I have to acclimate them to my lighting anyway, so I should introduce them in the "lighting acclimation phase"?

The clams will be coming from 400W Halides. I would assume I should get any soft corals I want to get up front and put them in to acclimate with the others, but probably wait until I have a full photoperiod to introduce the clams.

 

[mbbuna]

i would get the new lighting up and running before you add any clams. when you have a large lighting increase like that, you will have a lot of swings going on in the water. get all that stable first.
you said your tank is mostly softies, if your not allready doing so i would take this time now and get your Ca/Alk,Mg up high and stable.

 

[fishieness]

i acclimated all my stuff for my birthday (october). You have a timer right? I used the actinic PCs for a full 12 hours or so and i originaly had my halides on for 4 hours a day. Then every week i upped it one hour. I had a small blasto frag with 3 polyps. Two died and the other looked pretty bad. But they seem to actualy be recovering! I put them under my frogspawn so whenever it is open (all the time) it is shading them a little bit. The sick one appears to be coming back and another one must have almost come back from the dead. Because it went from nothing to a little corner.
or another method is to use an eggcrate top and get a bunch of mesh screen. Place them over every one of your corals. A few sheets on each one. Then once a week take off one sheet.