Customer Reviews

Giant Clams in the Sea and the Aquarium

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Put simply, if you are interested in purchasing a clam, buy and read this book first. You will more than likely save money in the long-run. In any event, you will have the go-to book on hand when problems and questions arise. The book is written in clear language and with a wry sense of humor. Recommended without qualification.

As someone who finds the online reef aquarium forums a bit troll-ish, and a potluck type of information source, this book is a refreshing find. Mr. Fatherree reminds me of one of my "cool" teachers from grad school (which were few and far between.) He has a down to earth writing style and is an excellent teacher. Important concepts are stated and re-stated, in order to reinforce long term memory. There are many beautiful, full color, full page photos in this book as well. It looks like and is setup like a textbook, but reads very quickly. All the information is relevant and due to the writing style, I finished it in 2 days. Plus you will never find a textbook that has this type of voice to it.

While an excellent resource, text books can be outdated quickly. This book was written around 5 years ago, and therefore I'm sure the author would have things he would like to add or change. One specific example for me was LED based lighting. As would've been everyone's opinion circa 2006, metal halide was the "go to" lighting setup for reef tanks or any creatures with high lighting demands, with additional PC bulbs as accessory lighting. My crocea seems to be doing great under my retro fitted LED hood in my 24 g reeftank, but LED based lighting systems were probably experimental (at best) at the time of publishing. Also, the author tends to discourage keeping tridachnids in smaller tanks, due to the high difficulty level. I believe there have been enough breakthroughs in "nano reef" technology since this book was written, that tridachnid care in a 24 gallon nano or larger, should be no problem for an experienced reefer.

Those are nitpicky things that can't be helped due to the age of the text. The other 99% of the book is excellent, dealing with common sense ways for tridachnid ID, care, troubleshooting pathology, etc. I honestly never knew that I would need to be concerned about my crocea spawning and causing a death-star like calamity to my tank. Mr. Fatherree discusses aquarists like myself who tend to be biased toward beauty, rather than hardiness. I shamefully may fall into that category, but I also don't mind a little challenge. I did, however, choose my crocea for its beauty over the more hardy squamosa, but that was before I read his book.

He also tends to advocate a philosophy that I have gravitated toward over my 6 years of reef keeping. It is that of "benign neglect." It has everything to do with good husbandry, meaning frequent water changes, high quality sea salt, and a good buffering compound. But nothing to do with constantly adding random nutrients, chemicals to your tank that the industry is so keen on selling everyone. In regard to tridachnid care, he seems to advocate that due to the specialized bacteria in clams, called zooxanthellae, they can get most of their food from photosynthesis and can filter feed nitrogen (and what little else they may need) from the waste of its fish neighbors. This fell right in line with my thinking as I did not want to add the phytoplankton additives, etc, that the local fish store wanted to sell me with my clam.

One disclaimer: you may be labelled a marine biology nerd after reading this. When my wife asked me about a particular clam in a commercial aquarium recently, the first thing I said was, "well, it's obviously not a hippopus or gigas, since it has tentacles surrounding its inhalant siphon." The looks on some of the people's faces in our group ranged from appalled to disturbed. ;)

In you're interested in keeping clams in your reef tank, you simply can not go wrong with this book.

This is the best and most updated book about tridacnid clams you can get today, including excellent photos as well.
I bought my copy at MACNA 2006 (Houston), from James himself.
Chapters are:
1. Tridacnid Biology Basics
2. Tridacnid Nutrition
3. The Tridacnid Species
4. Collecting, Farming, and Shipping Tridacnids
5. The Acquisition and Care of Tridacnids
6. Tridacnid Troubles

I've only had a chance to read a bit, but so far it's every bit as good as the articles that James writes for Tropical Fish Hobbyist of which I have been reading and enjoying for years.

I have met James personally and had the pleasure of having him speak for our marine club (DFWMAS). James knows Tridacnids and his book offers the most comprehensive up-to-date information on the care for Tridacnids. This is a must have book for all Tridacnid clam owners.

Book covers everything from how to chose what to feed and differences of all of the species. Lots of great knowledge!

My impressions of Fatherree's book:

Pros --

-- The photos are almost without exception beautiful and help to explain and illustrate points the author is trying to make.

-- Chapter 6 ("Tridacnid troubles) sets out a good amount of information on diseases that I have never seen in any other place.

-- The third chapter, on identification of the various species, is very useful, clear and well done overall. The photos in this chapter are invaluable and beautiful.


Cons --

-- The "conversational style" is something a reader may like, or may not. I did not. I want a clear explanation of a topic, not a conversation with someone who is trying to be casual, witty and amusing for reasons that don't help the explanation along. The author is apparently trying, in part, to make the book entertaining enough so that the reader wants to learn about the subject; virtually anyone who buys this book, though, already has enough interest in the subject to sustain them through the reading of the book.

-- The text on pages 130 and 131 is juxtaposed one with the other.

-- The chapter that many readers would want to be the most complete and cutting-edge (that on care of clams in the aquarium, Chapter 5) is the least informational of the book. The worst section in that chapter is probably the section on lighting. This section includes absolutely no mention of lighting intensity in any usably objective terms (PAR or even lux), and wastes five paragraphs with a repetitive monologue of his subjective opinions on the 'looks' of various color temperature bulbs. This chapter also includes a section on feeding, which spends ALL of its ten pages explaining how, how much, what and when to feed, only to conclude with the recommendation "if you want to avoid all of this, just do what I've done for years (as have a gazillion other hobbyists) and only keep tridacnids in well-established, well-stocked aquariums with bright lights and don't worry about them.(p. 183)" It should also be pointed out that the book devotes most of Chapter 2 to why Tridacnids need not be fed at all! Lastly, there was no information in the chapter on care of clams that is not currently what passes for common knowledge in the hobby. While this is fine, in the sense that a book can be usefully a compilation of common practices, I expected more.


In summary: a book that most interested hobbyists will find is worth owning, in spite of the fact that it falls short of a bar that has been set by recent books in the hobby, including Wilkerson's "Clownfishes", Borneman's "Aquarium Corals" and the three volumes of Delbeek and Sprung's "The Reef Aquarium".

finish reading this book in 2 days. this book covers pretty much everything from the caring to selection of tridacnid clams. i hv 5 clams in my reef tank. this book has really taught me a lot of things i hv overlooked such as feeding. i highly recommend this book.