Lobster Fest...

Okay, so it is really just a blue crawdead The blue is natural. This is Sarah's first pet, Claude, which is called a Blue Lobster. I was playing around taking pics and here are some of the results.





It turns kind of pinkish before it molts, which it did a few days after this shot


Post molting, he got quite a bit larger. His claws almost doubled in size in one molt!






The photos really don't show the change in size in just one molting because I don't really have anything for scale. We did save the two main claws from this recent molt. He ate most everything else right after molting. If he molts again, I will try to save the claws and then get a shot of all the previous ones for comparison. He's big enough now that you probably would not want to have him pinch anywhere tender...

I'm guessing Sarah would really frown on a crawfish boil at the house, as you would now be eating it's relatives?

Cool pet and nice pics!

LaserDave said:

I'm guessing Sarah would really frown on a crawfish boil at the house, as you would now be eating it's relatives?

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Despite that fact that I was born in Texas and have lived all but a few of my 50 years in Texas, I cannot stand crawfish or shrimp. My wife is much the same. So the odds of any being eaten at our home are slim to none

Great pix. Claude has some nice digs, too!
Crawdeads are fun to watch. I had one once that learned to take food from a straw lowered in the water.

(Don't add fish to the tank, unless you don't mind loosing them; Claude will eventually catch them.)

SpiritAtBay said:

(Don't add fish to the tank, unless you don't mind loosing them; Claude will eventually catch them.)

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There are four Goldfish in there with him. They were 19 cents each and were small when we bought them. The thinking was that if he did catch them, they were cheap food. Well... it turns out they are ravenous pigs. We have to use a long straw to get food past them down to Claude so he has even a remote chance of getting something to eat. One of the five died a few days after we got them. Their names were Monday, Tuesday, etc,... thru Friday. Ironically, it was Monday that died after the weekend... The four remaining have grown like crazy and are now so big, fat, and fast, that Claude really can't do much to them. Before they got real big, he only managed to trim a few fins... They will swim right in his face in between his main claws without any issue. Claude has molted several times now and has more than tripled in size. His main claws are now maybe 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 inches long. He spends most of his time inside a hollow rock and comes out at night. If the Goldfish continue to get big, it may not be too long before we see if a neighbor wants to add them to their outdoor Koi pond.

When our boys were little, they caught two crawdads and brought them home, one fairly large, the other small. We put them in the little aquarium with the Neon guppies. First the little crawdad went, then the Neons started disappearing. We named the survivor Deathclaw the Conqueror. He lived about five years. None of the Neons lived very long . . .