Blue crawfish molting

My ~2 year old blue crawfish molting.

Unfortunately I only caught the very tailend (har har) of this process, but it's better than nothing. Every other time he(?)'s molted, it's been overnight or when I was at work and I didn't find out until I discovered the molted exoskeleton in my aquarium. So catching him "in the act" this time was a thrill... and luckily I had my HD-capable camera handy to capture it.

He came out a lot darker (and with red hues) than his normal color. His normal coloring is much closer to the bright blue seen in the molted skeleton left behind. He stayed this darker color for close to a day, and still hasn't quite returned to his normal bright color.

He also lost one of his large pinchers 2 or 3 molt cycles ago. Before this molt it was about 2/3 the size of the other; now they appear to be almost identical in size.

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• aquarium
• blue crawfish
• molting
• nature is awesome