Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

Neonshrimp wrote: I can invission a net in one hand and a camera in the other while being waist deep in water !

add a pair of chest waders and two buckets tied together and hanging from my neck to your vision and you would be psychic.

Here is a nice photo of one of the juveniles now at almost 3 weeks old and 5mm in length.

Sure do love this new camera! The flash really brings out the colors, but with the naked eye they still look pretty much transparent.

Happy hunting!

Great picture, Thanks!

Ya, great pictures, particularly of such a small subject. I may have to get one of those cameras.

Thanks for the tip on the camera, Im having trouble getting good pictures with this sony.

That baby looks scary...it seems the camera is pretty good.

-Pedro

8 new free-living juveniles "born" today. Looks like another 10+ should come in the next day.

Also observed another mating today.

So things are going well with these little crays here.

Your got your cray-factory up and running, congratulations !

Neonshrimp wrote:Your got your cray-factory up and running, congratulations !

Well, it is not quite a factory, but it is a good and encouraging start for a captive breeding program to get these into the hobby.

Thanks!

Congratulations, About how many babies have you got so far? Seems like babies have been poping out every other day.

I think I have over 30 babies right now with a few more females still carrying eggs. I hope to end up with 50 or so by the end of December.

Keep up the good work. Your doing great.

Jason

Keep up the good work. Your doing great.

Jason

I second that!!

TKD

A few days ago, one of my isolated "pregnant" females aborted her newly hatched eggs which were at one of the early intermediate larval stages.

I removed her from the floating isolation tank and decided to just watch and see if these larvae would develop normally without parental care. I expected that they probably wouldn't make it, but hoped for the best.

These larvae were clustered together and I watched every day to see if development was continuing or if they were dead and decomposing.

To my surprise, all but one continued to develop into juveniles and today I have 5 of these now living independently on their own.

Had I not been isolating my "pregnant" females, these would have certainly become crayfish food instead of new baby crays.

I have split the artificial rearing of C. shufeldtii eggs from this topic (into a new topic) to keep this thread on topic (i.e. about C. diminutus as the title says).

I have had some difficulty keeping females with eggs from dropping them. As most of you know, I had been isolating these females in floating guppy breeders to prevent egg loss due to harrassment by other crays.

However, I still lost a lot of eggs and many females would drop all of them.

So I decided that the next egg carrying female would be transferred to my 10 gallon crayfish grow-out tank. So far, she has not dropped any eggs and just hides underneath her big magnolia leaf.

Although I was doing a good thing to isolate the females, I hadn't considered that a bare floating breeder tank did not provide enough shelter for the females to feel comfortable and safe (even though they were). I think the stress of floating in a glass cage was the cause of all of the egg loss.

My plan now is to add a fine layer of substrate to the floating breeders and provide some suitable hiding places such a small pieces of PVC pipe or leaves. This should ensure that the females are not bothered AND that they feel safe enough to hold onto their eggs.