Egg Slime

[black_sun]

Eww, egg slime! Heh, actually this was a rather interesting photo op as I've only seen it a few times before and never gotten to photograph it.

I was just starting to do a WC and tank cleaning on one of my Marmorkreb tanks as one of the females should have little craylings walking around in a few days, so it was a now or never thing (well, now or postpone it for longer than I'm comfortable with). And I startled another female out of her hide. She had apparently just extracted her eggs as they still had the excess sticky, mucus-like substance (glair) all over them and her tail. Usually, we (cray keepers) only get to see the crayfish after they are in berry and the glair has already hardened.

http://i44.tinypic.com/1z3m06g.jpg

Ewww, slimy crayfish! :yuck:

[rocker92]

cool!!!!!

[stezatois]

lol that looks like a nice little cray, lets have a pic of it too lol.

[black_sun]

lol that looks like a nice little cray, lets have a pic of it too lol.

This is from her last berry:

http://i39.tinypic.com/1shx7k.jpg

She was less slimy here lol

[stezatois]

shes very pretty, she looks tiny. How big is she?

[black_sun]

shes very pretty, she looks tiny. How big is she?

She is pretty, one of her tankmate beats her out in appearance though...

http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=886&pictureid=6995

Blue Marmorkreb!


Anyway, she's about 3" but in that picture above she was smaller, somewhere between 2-2.5".

[stezatois]

wow check out all those eggs. What do you add to your water lol.. Ok its official i want one now.

[adimeatatime]

Does the blue cray have blue babies? Very good pictures. I'd never seen what you were showing before.

[black_sun]

Does the blue cray have blue babies? Very good pictures. I'd never seen what you were showing before.

No, the blue cray doesn't have babies. In Marmorkrebs, the coloration morphs (white/pale blue, red, blue and olive green) aren't true morphs. They come and go sporadically and are a result of something(s) in the environment, as opposed to being the result of recessive genes like in other crayfish species. You'll lose the coloration when the crayfish molts and there's no way of knowing when you'll see it again and if it'll be the same color again even.

[black_sun]

wow check out all those eggs. What do you add to your water lol.. Ok its official i want one now.

Take some of mine, these critters breed like wildfire, I have so many of them (curse the asexual crayfish breeding every other month... I'm getting buried in crays... AAAAHHHH! lol)

[stezatois]

omg lol. I would if i were in the same country lol. But alas im in the uk.

[black_sun]

omg lol. I would if i were in the same country lol. But alas im in the uk.

Pfft, I've had crays make it from Germany... these would make it to the UK easy.

So take them, please, please take them!! Do it! lol

(actually, thanks to our lovely postal service price hikes you'd probably go bankrupt on the shipping. you could get them from Germany cheap, though, they're still really popular there. though, I believe these are illegal in the UK, aren't they?)