srsly

this weekend i got a clam for my aquarium.

this picture is in eugene’s aquarium; mine is the one in the middle.- EDIT:- this was taken last night in my aquarium. when i put it in my aquarium it looked really happy. that is until my peppermint shrimp started acting like i’d just but an all-you-can-eat buffet in front of it. i had to take out all the rocks in my aquarium to catch him. sometimes peppermints leave them alone, sometimes they like to eat them. i’m not risking it. the next day i noticed that my clam wasn’t all out and happy. i then saw my blenny take a bite at it. at first i thought it was just trying to get at some algae on the shell but it soon became apparent that it was trying to get at the mantle. it almost lost it’s head trying to get at it when the clam almost closed on him. again, i had to tear apart my rock work to get him out. so now the shrimp at the blenny are floating in a tupperware inside my tank until i can get them to the fish store.
it kinda sucks that i have to do that, i really liked both of them. but i like the clam a lot more and i’m not risking an animal like that for them. the clam is a Tridacna crocea. this is probably the hardest clam to keep happy in captivity. not only that but this is what is known as a super crocea. the difference is that the color on the mantle is incredibly vivid and patterned. these usually cost upwards of $50 for a specimen the size i have but i got it for $20. so my interest in keeping this thing happy is quite high. aside from that the blenny has annoyed every new thing i’ve put in my tank so far. this makes two things he’s tried to kill. a few weeks ago i purchased a rock that was absolutely covered in bright yellow zoanthid and star polyps. as soon as i put it in the tank the blenny started picking and rubbing all over the rock. the end result is that my star polyps didn’t open for about two weeks and about two thirds of the zoanthid colony died. i’m not taking such a risk with this clam.
so here we bid farewell to an annoying fish that was cute for a while, but ultimately a pest to a reef environment.