Emergency! Found My Ebl Out Of Tank!

[gldnachevr]

Please forgive any typos; I had carpal tunnel surgery yesterday, which makes typing rather tough!

"Shrimpy" is an EBL I purchased this past Spring. He is about 4-5 inches long now. He has molted 3 time since I acquired him and his last molt was about 7-10 days ago. He lives in a 20 gallon tank by himself now.

Over the past week I have noticed "Shrimpy" back swimming to the top of the tank to what appeared to be an attempt to get out. I went to an aquarium shop and asked about this and they suggested adding an air stone in case the oxygen level was low, which I did immediately. "Shrimpy" was successful and escaped on this attempt.

I woke up this morning at 6 am (Chicago time/CST) and found "Shrimpy" on the floor in my bedroom with my 2 cats surrounding him. I believe "Shrimpy" had to be out at least a half hour, as my husband saw the cats in the same position 30 minutes earlier.
"Shrimpy" now seems to be moving around a bit more, but was pretty inactive when I first returned him to his tank..

I am afraid "Shrimpy" is going to die. I don't know for certain how long he was out or what is too long for him to be out and/or if my cats harmed him at all. I did offer him food but he wasn't acting as he normally does when I give him his shrimp pellets and frozen blood worms. I offered this food to him; he ate very little and did so with hardly any enthusiasm.

In your opinion what is the prognosis and do you believe he can survive this ordeal? "Shrimpy" seems to be intact with no obvious injuries and not so much as a broken antennae. Is there anything special I can and/or should do to ensure he survives?

Thank you in advance for what I hope will be a quick response.

Jay F.
[email protected]

 

[Liam]

I don’t know what an Ebl is but I keep quite a few types of shrimp. If they are trying to get out of the water then it means that something is seriously wrong with the water quality. I would test for ammonia, nitrite etc. There isn’t anything you can do for shrimpy now except to try and find out what in the water was causing the problem and try and fix that. If you cant find the cause I would do some extra water changes and hope its not something in your water source. Shrimp can survive outside water as long as they don’t dry out, they can get oxygen through the water film on their bodies.
Anyway hope shrimpy is okay.

 

[cuticom]

By EBL I'm assuming you mean Electric Blue Lobster? Otherwise known as a blue crayfish? If so don't worry. These guys are designed so they can travel from dam to dam as long as they stay moist their fine, he should be fine once he settles down again. The cats didn't hurt him did they?

Crayfish try to escape no matter how pristine the water is, so make sure you've got a good heavy lid on them,

 

[jourdy288]

Once I had a crayfish-he was small and escaped one night. I recaptured him and put him in his tank. He escaped a second to and died. But don't worry. Just let him recover.

 

[MattD]

From what I've read, EBLs are like battle axes, they can withstand quite a bit. If he's acting funny, he's probably just a little shell shocked (no pun intended har har har), I mean after all, he was harassed by two giant hairy beasts for a short time. Give it time, he'll be just fine imo.