It’s been a minute since we harped on our continued infatuation with the fascinating Devil Clam, so this weekend we swung by one of our favorite Southern California LFS to see a pattern of Tridacna mbalavuana we haven’t seen before. Ali of Amazing Aquariums and Reefs is known as a connoisseur of rare and exotic marine life, and the recent trickle of Devil Clams into the market was not lost on him.
We’ve already shown you the golden yellow-orange color morph of the Devil Clam in great detail, but we’ve only had a couple snapshots of the psychedelic pattern of this rare and unique species. Thankfully, Ali is the proud owner of an exquisite scribbled “Tiger” T. mbalavuana and we took our time having photographic communion with this beautiful specimen.
The tiger devil clam has been at Amazing Aquariums and Reefs for a couple months now and it’s been doing really well under relatively bright lighting. The specimen exhibits a striking scribbled pattern which has become brighter over this clam’s acclimation to captive life, and it shows the same gnarly bumps on its mantle surface that is a hallmark of the species.
Ali has a great selection of other clam species and specimens and we also used this opportunity to take pictures of his large tiger patterned Derasa clam. In these pictures of the Tiger derasa you can clearly see the ‘family resemblance’ of the two species, Tridacna mbalavuana and T. derasa. The influx of Devil clams overall was short but sweet and while it is unclear if other devil clams will be imported from Tonga, we are thankful for the chance we had to better know this very exotic deepwater bivalve.
