Blue Lobster

[DamselnDistress]

I saw a blue lobster at the LFS and I was told they only get about a half a foot....but im looking on liveaquaria and its saying a foot or a foot n a half for a spiny blue lobster and so does marine depot...are we talking about the same lobster?

 

[stoneydee]

Make sure the one you're seeing at the LFS is really a lobster and not a large crayfish. . . I got all excited myself about one of those and then found that it was a crayfish. It is freshwater and has differing environmental needs from typical tropical FW fish.

 

[DamselnDistress]

definately a lobster

 

[thorn]

We have one at our LFS store that was taken out of a customer's tank when it got too big.

It started out the size of a shrimp (a good 1.5" or so) and is now well over a foot. Very beautiful but they do get big. He just molted the other day too... so he's still growing. Right now he's in a 90 gal. but before too much more time goes by... he'll be moved into the 800 gal. show tank.

 

[DamselnDistress]

So are there more than 1 kind of blue lobster?

 

[thorn]

There *can* be. Since pictures speak louder then words... here's some examples:

North Atlantic Blue Lobster (from Maine)

Painted Blue Lobster (from all topical oceans)

(blue) Coral Painted Crayfish (from Australia) - it's actually a lobster, but you know... Aussies always have to be a little different:

There are others too... but those above are most commonly kept in captivity.

Those don't cover the many shrimp (mantis and pistol) that have a blue color and can grow to be a good 6"... nor any of the freshwater crayfish.

 

[grimlock3000]

Real Atlantic Blue Lobsters are VERY rare as shown above. I live in Maine about two miles from the ocean, usually when one is caught, it ends up on the news and gets put on display somewhere

 

[utahcutter]

Yeah, just saw one on the news a while ago, I thought they said that only about one per year is caught, though I could be wrong on the time length. When you consider all the fishing going on that's not many.