Monomaniac fr

Under the « tridacna spot« :

The story:

A good friend of mine knew that I was looking for a blue Tridacna crocea with a « reasonable » size. So, when he saw 4 tridacna in his LFS, he kindly took pictures and sent them to me. The LFS owner told him that they were actually Tridacna crocea, and that all become blue when they get adult. Hummm, sounds weird…

Although I promised to myself that I would never buy a too small tridacna again, and also intrigued by what was just reported, I could not resist…I told Fabrice to get 2 of them for me.

One of the reasons why young and small tridacna are not recommended is because of their light weight. Indeed, they can be easily shaken (or worse) by other inhabitants in the tank, especially crabs…

When Fabrice brought them to me, they were even smaller than I thought: about 4 cm. But they looked beautiful!

Before I started acclimatizing them, I had a doubt that they were not Tridacna crocea as the LFS owner claimed. Indeed, although identifying a Tridacna crocea is not an easy task, the shape from above doesn’t look like a crocea. Moreover, it was mentioned « Tridacna maxima » on the CITES!

It is much easier to differentiate a crocea from a maxima by looking at the byssus (I learned alot by reading James Fatherree’s articles):
Left : crocea

I am wondering whether the LFS owner lied, or maybe it’s just incompetence? The CITES is pretty clear though.

Why do I prefer crocea to maxima? Well, it’s just their potential adult size, 15 cm versus  45 cm, or something like that. Anyway, it’s not such a big deal, because the maximum size is just theoretical and many things can happen before…

I have my 2 Tridacna maxima since 21/04/2013, and I love them