An unusual crayfish

'Blondie' - An unusual crayfish

Until her recent molt (yesterday, as I write on the 9th of May 2007), her nickname 'Blondie' would have seemed more appropriate than it does now, because she was a very pale tan or near blonde color, with just a small amount of 'normal' coloration on her claws. I suppose it should be noted that her claws have always seemed small - and it isn't that she has lost them in fighting, she never has. Maybe the name 'Blondie' will seem rather farfetched now, in view of her recent development, seen above. Here, briefly, is her story:

I was getting rid of normally-colored crayfish about a month ago, because of having acquired some blues and whites and needing the room to house them. Along with just a couple of others, 'Blondie' was kept, being at the time more or less half-grown, because I was curious to see what would happen when she molted. I figured she probably would revert to normal color when she molted, and if that had happened, she would not be here now. But she molted even lighter, and so I decided to keep her until she would molt again, just to see what would happen.
Okay, now she has molted again, and now has hardly any body color at all, exept for just a faint greenish-grayish color, and some normal color on her claws - and even at that, not much. So now I guess I will firm up my decision to keep her.
I had the opportunity to take the following photos early this morning because of her habit of frequently climbing up the plastic plants at fish feeding time, because rather than wait for shrimp pellets on the bottom as most of my crayfish do, Blondie loves fish flakes, always has, and so I had the opportunity to take photos from about 8 inches away, looking at her underside as she leans her head back against a floating brandy glass which has some starter plants in it, catching flakes - you can see the flakes in some of the photos. She appears rather bluer than she really is, just as a matter of the way my flash works. Her underside is just more or less white, and above she is 'pale' - sometimes looking grayish, sometimes more greenish. As said, except in these flash photos, she doesn't really look blue at all, except just a little bit on the claws and some spots on the sides of her cephalothorax. Observe:

A few more notes:
- Blondie's father is the socalled "wild" mmale who is now mated to a white female. I say 'socalled' because although he was born in the wild, he has lived in a community tank with small peaceful fish since he was a tiny baby about 14 months ago, and he is anything but wild. I don't make a habit of handling them, but this guy can be picked up and doesn't even struggle or pinch. (By contrast, Blondie's mother, who by the way is pursuing the wild life now, having been released, would give you a painful pinch if you picked her up, and would struggle mightily to be let go.)
- I say Blondie was kept along with 'just a couple of others'. Well, it happened that one of her siblings (born this past October) was just too elusive to be caught, and is still living in the community tank. I must catch it soon, it may be a male and I don't want it to mate with Blondie.
Two others, born in March, were kept, one deliberately because of being quite 'bluish' and the other inadvertently just because I didn't see it. They are also in the community tank, but at this point are too small to be relevant, and before they grow enough to be any problem I will have other tanks started up. I don't really have any real hopes for that 'bluish' baby - I have seen green and bluish babies before, and they generally grow up normally colored.

For an idea of how Blondie's color differs from that of her 'normal' sibling, look at one more picture:

It appears quite a bit smaller, and that's true, but the difference is also accentuated by the effect of the close-up setting of the camera. The point is, the smaller one is the normal brown color that we expect to see in the wild Procambarus alleni of Florida.
Just one more note - it seems to me Blondie is probably sexually mature, and I guess she is old enough, having been born late October, she is a bit over 6 months old. The only mature males in the tank with her are white, just as chance has it, I had no other place to put the extra white males but the community tank. So if she gets pregnant any time soon, it will be by a white male. That should be interesting.
I suppose some people would opine that I ought to pair the white female to a white male and put Blondie with her father. Well, yeah, that would probably make a lot of sense from one point of view; but in that case the white-white pairing would presumably not offer any opportunity to learn something, whereas in this case, both situations offer something to be learned. Given a choice like that, I will usually opt for the course that will be more informative.
Keep looking at these pages if you are interested in crayfish. As things develop, I will try to always be keeping a photographic record. I haven't gotten around to uploading it yet, but I have a good picture of Blondie's father and his new white ole lady makin' whoopie; with any luck at all she is pregnant, and so the genetic speculations discussed somewhere in these pages may yet yield some knowledge, or some food for thought, which is just as much fun...

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