a 26 inch shrimp... i dont think so
What do you make of these images? [I should have mentioned that my length figure included the front limbs.]
http://www.aqua-addiction.com/forums/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=24468: "Louie"- see owner quote below.
http://www.msstate.edu/dept/crec/prawn.jpg
http://southcenters.osu.edu/aqua/intro/sld013.htm
http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg/biodiversitii/bio/images/c16.jpg
Some background about the first picture:
i was the proud owner of "Louie" i had to give him to a friend of mine because he more than outgrew my 30 gallon tank. i would recommend keeping it alone unless you want it to kill everything. i had a 10" florida gar in the tank momentarily until i got my 55 gallon setup. it was for a very short time. two days later the gar was prawn food.he also ate a pleco, two snails, and my rafael cat. his normal diet was feeders and he loved shrimp pellets. Louie was definitely an awsome shrimp though. i gave him to my buddy to put in his 75g, and on my birthday Louie died . he was about 14" of body and about 8" of claw, by far the coolest aquatic pet that i have ever owned.
A length of two feet (including the elongate chelae-bearing limbs [
Macrobrachium literally means "long-arm"]) is standard for adult
Macrobrachium rosenbergii, though aquaculture facilites have reported greater sizes. This species is perhaps the largest shrimp in existence, rivaling, amongst freshwater crustaceans, the Tasmanian "freshwater lobster",
Astacopsis gouldi.
Many other
Macrobrachium spp. reach similar proportions, though some stay only a few centimeters in length (as the sand-burrowing "Indian pearl shrimp" - scroll down to "Detritus Eating Shrimp" within the "Shrimp Varieties" heading of
www.petshrimp.com), the genus, as the largest within the Palaemonidae, naturally being distinguished by a broad range of diversity. The genus spans a broad pan-tropical belt encompassing southern North America (to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers), Central & South America, Southern Europe (Italy and the Balkans, including Macedonia) Africa (from Mauritania probably down to South Africa), Madagascar, the Indian sub-continent (and possibly the adjoining Middle East), Southeast Asia, East Asia to the Ryukyu Islands, Austronesia (Indonesia across Wallace's Line to Australia proper), and numerous island chains of the Pacific (east to Hawai'i) and Indian Oceans.
Images:
http://www.kingeagle.net/MJ prawn.jpg
