My actual footage of a beautiful blue crayfish molting

Hi there my Steemit friends and followers!

I finally managed to edit the video I wanted to show you last week into a form that DLive will (hopefully) accept so here it is! :) I had to make it a bit shorter and reduce its size and quality though so, sorry about that.

Now let me provide you with some background info about what you are going to see here.

When it comes to molting, people usually associate it with snakes and reptiles only but crustaceans shed their skin too and it is actually a very interesting thing to watch.

The coolest thing about crustacean molting is that they actually shed their hard outer shell (aka the exoskeleton) in one piece. Therefore, if you stretch the molt out, it will look like a live crayfish (or crab) once it gets dry. However, you shouldn’t take the whole molt out of the tank as it contains stuff that the animals need for healthy growth and development. If you leave it in the fish tank, they will eat in a few days.

Prior to molting, the crustacean usually stops eating and starts reabsorbing some of the calcium carbonate from its old exoskeleton. The animal then secretes certain enzymes to separate the hard outer shell from the underlying skin. After that, a new, very soft shell beneath the old one is created and the crayfish is ready to molt. The whole process can take anything between a few minutes up to several weeks, depending on the species and age.

The species captured on the footage is the red-claw crayfish (cherax quadricarinatus) a large, freshwater crayfish native to ponds, streams and rivers of Australia and Papua New Guinea. I used to keep them as pets in my fish tank. The one in the video was a few month old. These guys are amazing creatures and they are really fun to watch but if you decide to keep them as pets, make sure to provide them with a large tank and a proper care so that they can live happily in an environment that matches their natural habitat as closely as possible.

Note: If you find the video a bit too lengthy, skip the middle part and go for the last 30 seconds or so where the crayfish finally jumps out of his old skin ;)

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