Beware PETCO false advertising "blue shrimp" = crawfish

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Bobdolemite

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Mar 30, 2005
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Like many on here speculated when I first posted, the "blue shrimp" that I got from petco is in actuality a blue crawfish of some sort. Its either some florida variety or the Blue knight crawsfish.

Went on a vacation and came back to two dead sword tails, one blinded, and the other beheaded. I am going to have to separate him now, or perhaps feed him to the cat or something. But the "shrimp" that they sell are anything but harmless, so to anyone shopping there be careful lol, things are mislabeled allot.
 
Petco sells both actual "blue shrimp" (Macrobrachium rosenbergii, capable of attaining a length of 26 inches - see here) and blue crayfish (both North American - probably Procambarus alleni var. "blue" - and Australian - Cherax spp.).

All three have predatory tendencies.


Some more images of M. rosenbergii:

http://www.msstate.edu/dept/crec/prawn.jpg

The immense "Kentucky King"

http://www.papuaweb.org/gb/foto/muller/ecology/08/ (Scroll down to view some staggeringly large specimens. I believe this page was written in Bahasa Indonesia [Irian Jaya, literally "Irian Victory" (now Papua) - the western portion of the New Guinean mainland - has, from its surrendering by the Dutch, been administered by Indonesia as its easternmost territory], but an English version is accessible at the top.)

(Note the degree of color variation in this wide-ranging species).

A quote from a former M. rosenbergii owner:

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.
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(My boldface for accentuation.)


North American crayfish:


Procambarus clarkii var. "blue"

Procambarus alleni


Two of several blue Cherax spp.:

C. destructor

C. lorentzi


Which of the above species does your specimen most closely resemble?
 
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Some more questions:

1) Can you provide any images?

2) When did you obtain your "blue shrimp"?

3) How large is it?

4) Can you describe your present setup?
 
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Be aware that the "blue shrimp" (M. rosenbergii) Petco carries are typically juveniles and thus look more like this.
 
Yes my LFS carry those M rosenbergii as feeder shrimp, though they always work well for me because at an inch they cant do any harm to tankmates and all mine are eaten the first time they molt. Though I did put a couple in my exodon tank, and one managed to hide and grow to about 4" and then I moved him to my hujeta/senegal tank and he was eaten within a week.

But yes these grow to be MONSTERS!!

If its a "blue lobster" looks more "armoured" than a blue shrimp, then they dont get as big, but will still attack tankmates.
 
whouldnt you be able to tell the difference between a shrimp and a crawfish? i mean the big claws on them kinduv tell them apart... i would sugest you putting more reasearch into your specimens before you buy them

also, i would like to add that the mislabeling of stuff at petsmart is sometimes rewarding, both me and a friend of mine have bought 'corys' from petsmart for $3, but they were actually upsidedown catfish!
 
I am a certified diver and have seen many diff species in the wild. I know what a shrimp looks like, the "shrimp" at petco had a full descrip including pics name and total size (1.5" full grown) after some searching on the net I found out they mislabeled them.

The addition of claws seemed a tad odd, but i figured with the label and all that it was some sort of freshwater shrimp cousin that had claws. I had just assumed after a 25 min conversation with one of the employees that they had labeled their tanks correctly.

Dont know about you guys but going to diff stores ususally results in seeing many diff species of fish, some I never see a second time even from the same store.

they came from a petco on lakewood boulevard in long beach. Ill try and get some hosting space so I can upload the pics for you guys.

mainly this was meant as a warning to those that didnt know, petco mislabels stuff, and it can mean the death of your fish hehe.
 
oh btw it looks most like the one labeled lornzi or something like that, although he is all blue, the claw size is right though on that one, im sure they are in the same family.

tank setup: 20 gal

fully planted

2 - ruby red swordtails

4 - stained glass tetras

4 - rosy tetras

3 - head and tail ights

1 - blue monster, approx 1.5" in length, hasnt molted in a while but I assume he will grow more. He only seems to go after the swordtails, probable due to their size, larger than him. He used to be in a 5 gal with a beta and he and that fish had allot of problems.

on a side note, I think what they actually sold me is worth more than the seven dollars I spent. Everything that I have seen on the internet is at least 25 bucks going as high as 37 bucks for anything even closely resembling what I have.
 
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Bobdolemite said:
mainly this was meant as a warning to those that didnt know, petco mislabels stuff, and it can mean the death of your fish hehe.
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Well, I would urge one to conduct research prior to any livestock purchase. If what you purchased had indeed been Petco's "blue shrimp", fish losses would likely have come even sooner.
 
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