Information and advices regarding Teardrop Maxima.

OrionN

Moved on
Tear drops Maxima are from Viet Nam. They are striking, unusual and beautiful clams. Many of us have being disappointed because they did not live very long in our tank, even when the very best conditions were provided. I was talking to an importer of these clams last weekend. He stated that there are problems with collection of these clams. The reason why most if not all of them died is that the collectors just ripped them off of the rocks instead of cut the byssal threads and remove the clams or take the rock with the clams.
Please everybody, if you are going to spend the money and buy one of the tear drops Maxima, please, please make sure that they have healthy byssal attachments. You can demand that the clams be attach to a piece of rock before you buy it. If you donââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t, you will be disappointed because you will soon have a dead clam as many people reported.
The only way we can change the harvesting methods is by exert pressures from our end. If you donââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t do this, you will soon be very disappointed as many of us find out.

I wanted to alert this to everybody so that we stop the wastes of these beautiful clams. It was estimated by the same importer that the mortality of these clams are well over 90% as is. He took a huge loss in import these clams so have not done this again for quite a while.
Minh Nguyen
 
Other than Darren Walker at Palmettoreef.com, who else have a healthy teardrop Maxima? Anybody?
Minh Nguyen
 
Excellent post Minh. Hope you don't mind that I made the thread sticky for a while.

:D
 
Thanks Minh.

I was under the impression that these T. maxima came from same location, one out of many have the tear drop patterns - making them very rare.

There is a tear drop on ecoral.tv for sale. The website said that it was kept for more than 1 month. I see no one jumped on it, probably due to the price and tear drop clams reputation of being difficult to keep.

I wish I knew about this - so that I did not waste my effort on two of them. I doubt if any vendor would be willing to let the clam attach to rock before selling it. I will probably just stay away from tear drop to avoid disappointment.

Peter
 
i've had this one for over a year. i've wondered though, do the 'tears' have to be green to be called a teardrop? all the one's i've seen labeled teardrop have the green 'tears'. it's put on around 2 inches lengthwise since this pic was taken.

GoldMaxima.jpg
 
This is one exceptional Maxima. Does the mushroom bother the clam? I wonder if a clam breeder wanted to use your clam?
Lovely picture and clam.
BTW, Darren's Teardrop Maxima died :sad2::sad2:
Minh Nguyen
 
Matty, that is BEAUTIFUL!

I wish you all the luck in raising it successfully.

What is frustrating about mine is that the clam had completely healed over the large chunk of rock it had pulled in through the byssal opening. Because of the shape and size, it was unable to eject it- eventually leading to its death from internal damages, IMO.

Here is the link to my long post about this 7"+ Teardrop:

http://www.reefcentral.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=138560
 
Minh, thanks for the information.

It seems many times that everyone hears the word "wild", problems with that specimen soon follow. Many facilities have begun captive production of these Tridacnids such as ORA farms which I see Darren has already been receiving stock from. The real question is have they begun to try and stabilize production of tear drop clams? Does anyone have any contacts in breeding facilities so that they can go find out. If nobody has started anything then I think we should just start now. Although I do not know a lot about breeding clams (that is what I will need to research), a wild specimen is a F0, when the 2 F0's are crossed the first generation of F1's are produced as the offspring. The question is , if two Tear drop vietnamese strain Tridacna maxima's are spawned together, will the offspring breed true with the tear drop pattern, or will further cubing/stabilization need to be done? Maybe we could begin a search for all tear drops doing well in aquarists tanks... although many wouldn't give them up maybe we can convince ORA or another breeding facility to start collecting them so they can get the strain under control and begin captive production. Everything starts out as rare at one point.. once captive production begins that changes.

Does anyone have any information they can spare me or would anyone be up for helping me getting in contact with one of the clam breeding facilities? Thanks.
 
The actual fertilization and rearing of offspring happens in areas like the Marshall Islands (my fav), Pohnpei, and other mostly island areas with lagoons suitable for the farming of these clams. The main reason for the rearing of these clams is for food.

ORA is an aquacultured-only wholesaler that imports clams and grows and sells them from their greenhouses and indoor facilities in Florida. They also have bred many marine fish commercially for the first time, and are part of the aquacultured marine products "cutting edge".

Companies like mine purchase the clams through wholesalers such as ORA and others, and grow them out and house them for resale- but no actual breeding is done at these locations that I am aware of.

I have read extensively about breeding these clams- it is very funny to me how careful we are with these clams, when the farms set them out in the sun to stress them enough to induce a breeding response. There are USDA documents about lagoon farming procedures for these clams, I will post a link when I find my notes.

We are currently setting up large tanks for clam breeding experiments, so perhaps one day I will have captive bred teardrops. The problem is that the mature clam I bought for broodstock is now dead.

:(
 
Darren,
So sorry to hear of your clams death:(
It was a beauty and I thought for sure it would live.
 
golden tear drop

golden tear drop

i have a golden tear drop i got from eddy at tropical paradise in san lorenzo,,,,,ive had it for almoast a year and it is doing great(knock on wood) i realy need a digital camera.
 
Wow, this sounds great! Is culturing clams very hard? How does it work?

If tear drops can be cultured, that would be awesome!
 
It took two years before the harvest and shipping methods to get work out. Now there is a flush of these beautiful clams come to the US market from Viet Nam. So far, I have not seen any of the exotic teardrop partern this time around yet. Two years ago, the color of the Teardrop Maxima from Viet Nam were astounding. I hope they will come soon.
Minh
 
Breeding clams is difficult and very labor intensive. I have bred maximas including 3 spawns induced with serotonin injections. I was able to keep larvae for about 2 months.
Broodstock are labile to repeat spawning IMO and therefore you need a large number of rotating donors for breeding(~20).
As soon as time permits I will be beginning again w/ breeding clams in a lab type environment.
Adam
 
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