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.
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Happy hunting! 
