Blue Lobster

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DamselnDistress

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Oct 14, 2003
Messages
93
Location
ohio
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?
 
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.
 
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.
 
There *can* be. Since pictures speak louder then words... here's some examples:

North Atlantic Blue Lobster (from Maine)
news1a_08-30-01.jpg


Painted Blue Lobster (from all topical oceans)
LOBSTER.jpg


(blue) Coral Painted Crayfish (from Australia) - it's actually a lobster, but you know... Aussies always have to be a little different:
TropicalLobsterphoto1a.jpg


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.
 
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 :)
 
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.
 
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