Is this Pinched Mantle?

DSC reef · Nov 27, 2018

cracker said:
Do some clams stay small?

Not in the tridacna family, they all can get fairly large. It would take a long time for one to out grow typical tank depending on size and live stock unless it's a gigas

They are not for sale at this time anyway. Second fastest would be derasa for growth rate. What would be considered small to you in inches for a clam?

hart24601 · Nov 27, 2018

Crocea stay pretty small. 6" would be huge and take decade plus. Maxima's if bought small take quite a few years to hit 6" and I have never seen one more than 8" measured.

Oshengems · Nov 27, 2018

I have a Maxima roughly 3” wide when I bought it but Idk if it’s my tank but I will say about “1 growth since July 4, 2017 very slow but looks happy

DSC reef · Nov 27, 2018

hart24601 said:
Crocea stay pretty small. 6" would be huge and take decade plus. Maxima's if bought small take quite a few years to hit 6" and I have never seen one more than 8" measured.

I wish I still had the picture to share, a 12" maxima. Although gold, it was still an impressive site. I could only imagine how old that thing was.

hart24601 · Nov 27, 2018

DSC reef said:
I wish I still had the picture to share, a 12" maxima. Although gold, it was still an impressive site. I could only imagine how old that thing was.

Wow where was that? Wonder if was wild collected.

DSC reef · Nov 27, 2018

hart24601 said:
Wow where was that? Wonder if was wild collected.

It was here in Florida at a LFS. He had a customer account and it out grew the tank at around 9" so he put it in his store and the clam became kind of a landmark for the store for many years. He ended up selling it to another customer. It was in a red sea max 650 and he had to pull the entire light fixture off to get the clam out. With the mantle extended it looked bigger than 12 ". Never new if it was wild collected though. It was over 8 years ago.

hart24601 · Nov 27, 2018

That's awesome. I bet it did look huge. I have measured derasas and squammy shells at 12" and with mantle they are waaay bigger and most ppl would guess them at 20" haha.

Was it a tear drop? I have seen those get longer.

DSC reef · Nov 27, 2018

hart24601 said:
That's awesome. I bet it did look huge. I have measured derasas and squammy shells at 12" and with mantle they are waaay bigger and most ppl would guess them at 20" haha.

Was it a tear drop? I have seen those get longer.

It was not a tear drop, I doubt he would have sold that;Hilarious I swear our squamosa was bigger than 12" looking at the mantle but the shell doesn't lie, lol.

._Z_. · Nov 27, 2018

Great advice from everyone. I thought I did a good job checking on it at the store but I could easily have missed something since this was my first clam. I’ll admit I was overconfident in trying a maxima for my first clam but I love the eclectic blue color.

At this point it’s clearly in bad shape and I’d like to use the shell to ‘plant’ a zoa garden on to turn it into something beautiful again.

How should I go about doing this? Freeze the clam then scrape out the guts? Let it live for its last couple days and let the CUC take care of it? There’s still flesh there, and it still closes if I poke it. Thoughts?

hart24601 · Nov 27, 2018

I have just removed them and scooped the tissue out with my finger. Comes out easy. If you wait till it rots it’s really, really gross.

MSB123 · Nov 27, 2018

._Z_. said:
Great advice from everyone. I thought I did a good job checking on it at the store but I could easily have missed something since this was my first clam. I’ll admit I was overconfident in trying a maxima for my first clam but I love the eclectic blue color.

At this point it’s clearly in bad shape and I’d like to use the shell to ‘plant’ a zoa garden on to turn it into something beautiful again.

How should I go about doing this? Freeze the clam then scrape out the guts? Let it live for its last couple days and let the CUC take care of it? There’s still flesh there, and it still closes if I poke it. Thoughts?

I have had a maxima for about 5 months now, the key points for me are high light, and long light acclimation. I started at 5% of the intensity I wanted to get to, and ramped up 3% a week. It took 2 months to just get to my ideal intensity.
Next time you get a clam, try to acclimate very slowly (1.5-2 months)