bluecrayfish.com

I've been using these plastic jars for preserving crayfish: http://www.freundcontainer.com/product. ... 1253283792. Unfortunately they are not entirely air tight and the alcohol evaporates over time. I've been trying to figure out a good easy way to seal them. My best idea so far is to wrap the lid/jar junction with rubber electricians tape. Seems easy, but I'm not sure if the rubber and/or adhesive might react over time to the alcohol fumes. Any ideas?

what about using small mason jars instead. they are good enough to seal food and beverage in. you can generally find them online for a much better price than wally world or local grocery stores.

I always used canning jars for the critters my kids wanted to preserve. They seal themselves over time without actually going through the canning process.

You can also use small mayonnaise jars with the canning lids and rings. They don't have words or decorations on them after the paper is washed off, so there is nothing to get in the way of viewing.

Mason jars are good. With my Texas survey, I have a huge number of collections, especially of small babies. 1, 2 and 4 ounce jars make for great space efficiency. I can't find mason jars that small. If I used even 8 ounce mason jars, I would run out of space.

Another idea for sealing the jars is using rubber bands. They sell short/fat (2" x 1/2") rubber bands for wrapping broccoli. I'm going to do some tests with those. They might stretch out over time and lose their sealing ability though.

I may have to just deal with the pain of periodically topping off the alcohol every six months, until I can transfer them to a museum and let them deal with it.

Ball jars and Mason jars are basically the same. I have a few of these small ones, for small batches of preserves. They're so cute! haha Not a lot of that quilted stuff, just "Ball" on them. You can stack quite a few in a small area.

http://www.freshpreserving.com/pages/ho ... roduct=289

Went to the hardware store yesterday and a salesman suggested a very good idea: thread seal tape. Read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_seal_tape. I tried some out and it looks very promising. I have some test bottles set up. I should know the results in a few months.

Duh! I keep that stuff in my fish room and didn't even think about using it to seal your jars. I hope the alcohol won't affect it.

What do you use it for?

Do you mean that white plumber's tape? That should work too.

I use it for connecting my home made spray bars so I don't have to glue them permanently. Then they can be taken apart for cleaning, but don't leak when in use.

I also used it for the screw valves on my air manifolds to be sure they don't leak air.

On the bulk head fittings of my drilled tanks.

I'm sure there are other places that I can't think of at the moment.

Dan, i have a few dead cray bodies, air preserved. do you want them? i also had a cray die last night, she is a huge blue alleni and shes currently out of the water, laying there drying. IF you want her please email me theemon@gmail.com asap. she was a great cray and ill just end up throwing the bodies away. i have older ones(as mentioned in the beginning) that i almost threw away yesterday.

Thanks for the offer, but I'm only working with Texas crayfish, so if they are not from Texas, they wouldn't be of any use to me. Various museums might be interested, but only if they are wild caught and you have good locality information.

no, these are all tank bred by me. they are p. alleni and p. clarkii. they were just too important to throw away. but im pestered to by the gf, she dont mind the live ones, but thinks the dead ones are kinda creepy.

um dead critters? or no im a little confused

My first cray recently died, he was about 3.5 inches and was most likely about to molt. I never considered just putting him in a jar, that sounds cool.

I wonder, if you just left a dead cray outside by an anthill, would there be nothing left but a clean exoskeleton after a week or so?

Lol thats how assassin died! but i would thinknso because i was too heart-broken too take assassin out so like 2 or 3 days later my mom was gonna take him out but he was gone (goldfish prolly ate him)

red_blue , if u just leave the body out, no ants, the body dries up, theres not much meat there. thats what i did

If put a fan on it, it will be dried up in hours.

Dan,

I don't know if you have seen the baby soda bottles. These are the blanks they make 2-liter bottles from. They are used for lots of different things and in quantity can cost very little. I became familiar with them as a brewer. They culture yeast in them. They work well for specimen jars. the lid is designed to hold the pressure from the Co2 in soft drinks so may not evaporate easily. They may not be able to hold large specimens unless you could find the 3-liter blanks.

See photos.

Jack

I started an experiment six months ago on different methods of sealing preservation jars. The ones I'm using are simple one ounce plastic jars with simple plastic lids. The best solution is to just tighten the lids as tight as possible: I turn the lids until I hear a couple light pops and the lid won't turn any more. Jars tightened this way show no noticeable evaporation. Jars with just slightly snug lids had the worst evaporation and completely evaporated in about 3 months (1/2 ounce since the jars were half full). Thread seal tape slowed the evaporation, but the jars still evaporated about 1/4 to 1/8 ounce in six months. Wrapping duct tape around the lids also completely stopped the evaporation, but it's a pain to do this.

Dan, plumbers' tape isn't so thick and gunky looking, and it works really well. Plumbers wrap this around a fitting (the female side) before they screw the male end on. You can buy it by the roll at HomeDepot, Lowes, etc. I think Walmart carries it too!

http://aathread.thomasnet-navigator.com ... ade-in-usa?

But sounds like you've found the fix. My luck, I'd overscrew the thing and crack it. lol

That looks like the type of tape I was using.

Dan,

if you have access to medical or laboratory supply you may also try Parafilm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parafilm

we´ve used it for years at the university to seal all sorts of jars - it´s very durable and easy to apply.