Reef Bass
colors and textures
8 or 9 months ago I purchased two small maximas, one gold and the other blue. Both were less than 2 inches. They were restless little guys and after trying just about every type of possible location / substrate, they finally settled down, each on their own rock. And there they've been for a good six plus months showing no inclination to relocate. The gold one has grown remarkably - it must be 3.5" now. The blue one has grown too but much more slowly. It's maybe 2.5".
While doing my early morning inspection of my tank, I noticed that the gold maxima had leapt from its former perch and landed on the sand bed.
Here is a poor shot from the side at an angle, so it looks weird but you can see in the red circle where the clam was attached. Note the large, stout clump of byssal threads.
Also check out how much of the rock the clam had worn away. The clam was oriented perpendicular to this shot, or lengthwise away from the camera. I righted the clam on the sand bed.
Here is a top down shot later today. The clam has buried itself down in the sand (covering some zoanthids in the process) but looks content otherwise. Its former point of attachment can be seen in the upper middle right and there is a hermit crab munching on the lump of byssal threads. All the white area there is raw rock - no encrusting coraline or anything - as though the surface were rubbed away and ground down.
In my opinion, based on the amount of rock the clam had rubbed away, I believe it rejected its once dandy but now too confining location and decided to move. It appears to have voluntarily disconnected its attachment and wriggled away.
I moved the clam from the sand bed to a new rock and it seems happy so far. It's nicely reactive and looks and acts as though nothing happened.
Here's a color corrected macro shot of the attachment point after I spun the rock around to get a better view (which created a mini snow storm hence all the dust in the pic). The mass of threads is a softer now and its thready nature can be seen, including where the hermit was munching.
I'm not worried about the clam. I think it is and will continue to be fine. Anyone ever see their clam do this?
While doing my early morning inspection of my tank, I noticed that the gold maxima had leapt from its former perch and landed on the sand bed.
Here is a poor shot from the side at an angle, so it looks weird but you can see in the red circle where the clam was attached. Note the large, stout clump of byssal threads.
Also check out how much of the rock the clam had worn away. The clam was oriented perpendicular to this shot, or lengthwise away from the camera. I righted the clam on the sand bed.
Here is a top down shot later today. The clam has buried itself down in the sand (covering some zoanthids in the process) but looks content otherwise. Its former point of attachment can be seen in the upper middle right and there is a hermit crab munching on the lump of byssal threads. All the white area there is raw rock - no encrusting coraline or anything - as though the surface were rubbed away and ground down.
In my opinion, based on the amount of rock the clam had rubbed away, I believe it rejected its once dandy but now too confining location and decided to move. It appears to have voluntarily disconnected its attachment and wriggled away.
I moved the clam from the sand bed to a new rock and it seems happy so far. It's nicely reactive and looks and acts as though nothing happened.
Here's a color corrected macro shot of the attachment point after I spun the rock around to get a better view (which created a mini snow storm hence all the dust in the pic). The mass of threads is a softer now and its thready nature can be seen, including where the hermit was munching.
I'm not worried about the clam. I think it is and will continue to be fine. Anyone ever see their clam do this?
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