Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

Sounds like a great plan, hope it works out.

One question, were you able to salvage any of the dropped eggs and incubate them using you previous techniques?

YuccaPatrol

Thank You
For the useful information.
Being that this Hobby is still growing, the sharing of information is very important.
Other Forum Members might not have the same Species of Crayfish as you. But, they can learn from your experience.
And this might help them to Breed there Species.

John

How is the breeding progressing ?

For the first few months, I had lots of pregnant females, but the majority of them dropped their eggs or only carried a few through to completion.

However, I have now adjusted my strategy for isolating the females. I am still moving them into the floating guppy breeder units, but I now put in a sand substrate and a leaf for them to hide under. I realized that although isolating them kept them safe from harrassment by "jealous" males, floating in an empty glass box might have stressed them out too much.

Right now, I have 3 of these pregnant females and they seem to be holding onto more eggs. Too early to determine if this modified method is as good as it seems, but these 3 crays are holding onto a good number of eggs at a point where they used to be dropping them. I'll have a better idea in a few weeks when/if offspring are produced.

Great work Yucca, please let us know in a few weeks how it went.

Thanks.

What have worked best for me with dwarf crays is giving the pregnant females their own little tanks with lots of plants it also makes a good nursery for the fry.It does not even have be any filter with such a small bio load.Or keeping them in pairs in small tanks and remowing the male
after spawning.

bjar, thanks for letting me know your method of isolating the females.

A few days after I isolated those 3 females in the "improved" floating boxes, I moved a small colony from one tank to another. At this time, I discovered that there were 3 newly pregnant females in that tank. So I decided just to leave them in the tank with no other crays.

At this point, one of the isolated crays has lost all of her eggs, another only has a few remaining, and the third has a lot of eggs. Because one is holding onto most of the eggs, this is a slight improvement.

However, the second group of 3 females in their own full size 10 gallon nursery tank are doing MUCH better. All of them have a full load of developing eggs under their abdomens.

Again, I'll wait until both groups of eggs finish development, but this is very clear evidence that a larger female-only nursery tank seems to be the best option for maximizing production of offspring.

So I am now thinking of moving to a 3 tank system: one for the main breeding colony, one nursery tank for egg carrying females, and another as a juvenile grow-out tank.

Just a thought.
If you can divide a tank, or set up a system that shares the water between the tanks so that you can put the females in a safe section without the shock of a different tank all together, it may work better.

When I move berried females to another tank it rarely works for me.

When I move berried females to another tank it rarely works for me.

It would have to be a good sized portion of the breeding tank because Yucca did keep the females in floating boxes in the same water but that did not work. I guess keeping the berried females in the same water and landscape would reduce the shock.

If one of you try it please let us know how it turns out.

Yes, I've followed this thread. You can inter connect 10 gallon tanks so they share the same filtration.

The method of moving males only seems to work the best. I use to do this with my cajuns. But Now I have so many I do not worry about it anymore. I use to set up 10 gallon breeder tanks and put 1 male and 3 females in. After females were holding I would take the male out and move him. After the females released their young I would take them out. This is the best method for maximizing your hatchings. I had made a 10 gallon rack system that was 3 tall and 5 wide. 15 tanks in all. I could easily control where everybody was going and coming from. The other methods work as well but with some unintentional losses. Keep up the good work Yucca.

The method of moving males only seems to work the best.

I think I will try this with my dwarf crays if/when they breed since it is much less stress on the females and eggs. It would be alot of work with a tank with many males, but I only have a few crays so let's see

Thanks