Hey cool!
Before I got to the end of your post, I was thinking: "hmm..I wonder if he is shedding his shell...?" Do you think it's a Blue Lobster?

Maybe he is a lobster!! I just don't know, but here he is. Meet Jacques :) Christy
{{gwi:376650}}

We used to sell that at the wholesaler as a Blue Lobster. Yes, they do moult.

You can call them Blue Lobsters, but they really are just natural blue phased, native southern US crawfish. Before they became popular as aquarium novelties and breeders started selectively breeding to fix (and intensify) the color, the blues ended up in the steamer along with the red and brown phased ones. Of course, all were bright boiled red when they came to the table.

But they are NOT algae eaters! If you really want to make your girl (it's a fem) happy, give her a small piece of another crawdad. Besides being carnivores, they are also cheerful cannibals. However, just one big FW (NOT SW) farm raised "Tiger" shrimp, cut up and kept frozen, would keep a small cawfish fed for weeks. The Gouramies would try for their share too.

They are also not very happy in too warm of water. 72 would be about max for their continued comfort, as they require a lot of dissolved oxygen.

Thanks, birdwidow :) I did figure out that it was a crawdad. I did find a site about Crawfish that I found very helpful, linked below. Thanks for letting me know about the temp, I just turned my heater down, I'll try to get it under 75. Christy :)

Here is a link that might be useful: Blue Crayfish

how do you keep these with out them turning all the tank plants into a floating salad??
i have a regular brown one and it chops up every plant i put in there with in a day.

maybe i just have a neurotic cray fish??? lol

Mine messes with the plants, but she hasn't really caused a lot of damage. Maybe it is the types of plants?? Christy :)