Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

Hi folks,

Welcome to Petshrimp.com's new Crayfish Forum! Share your experiences with crayfish with other crayfish keepers. Have fun!

Mustafa

OK, so now we have a forum for the zarigani/crayfish/crawdad/mudbug keeper but, there's no one here.

Just wait, there will be. I, for one, am one. I have a breeding pair of the blue Procambarus alleni. Besides, there wasn't an explosion of forum participants when I put up the shrimp forum for the first time, either.

Mustafa

Hi !
And me, too
Have some Procambarus spec. Mamorkrebse, Cambarellus shufeldtii and soon three baby Cherax cf. papuanus(get them for some Sri Lanka Shrimps )
And have to see, what Mustafa get as crayfish - pet.

Flori

I will actually have some pictures and species descriptions up soon. I will add more and more species one by one as I get them and make enough experiences with them to intelligently talk about them and their requirements.

By the way...those "Marbled Crays" (Marmorkrebse) are some very amazing crays. They are completely unkown in the US, although they are supposed to originate from North America. So let me explain shortly for everyone else.

"Marbled Crayfish" are a species of crayfish that started showing up in German hobbyists' tanks in the early to mid nineties. They spread very rapidly since they were so easy to breed. People were swearing for years that their one crayfish female would produce offspring asexually without the help of any males. In fact, no males were ever found! Even hatchlings brought up in tanks that never had any contact with other crayfish would produce offspring at sexual maturity. So, the suspicion was that these crayfish are parthenogenic. This suspicion was confirmed recently when some scientists conducted some laboratory experiments with the crayfish and published a paper about it.

So, this crayfish is the only parthenogenic decapod crustacean known to science! To this date even the scientists were not able to figure out what species this crayfish really is. They determined that it must be a Procambarus species, but it seems like the species has never been scientifically described. How do you scientifically describe a species of crayfish that only occurs in hobbyists' tanks, and nobody even knows where this species occurs naturally (if it occurs naturally at all)?

In any case....there we go. Now crayfish enthusiasts in the US and the rest of the world excluding Japan (I think these crayfish already made it to Japan) finally found out about this amazing creature.

More info on crayfish to follow in this forum and in a special "Crayfish Varieties" page soon.

Take care,
Mustafa

Mustafa wrote:I will actually have some pictures and species descriptions up soon. I will add more and more species one by one as I get them and make enough experiences with them to intelligently talk about them and their requirements.

By the way...those "Marbled Crays" (Marmorkrebse) are some very amazing crays. They are completely unkown in the US, although they are supposed to originate from North America. So let me explain shortly for everyone else.

"Marbled Crayfish" are a species of crayfish that started showing up in German hobbyists' tanks in the early to mid nineties. They spread very rapidly since they were so easy to breed. People were swearing for years that their one crayfish female would produce offspring asexually without the help of any males. In fact, no males were ever found! Even hatchlings brought up in tanks that never had any contact with other crayfish would produce offspring at sexual maturity. So, the suspicion was that these crayfish are parthenogenic. This suspicion was confirmed recently when some scientists conducted some laboratory experiments with the crayfish and published a paper about it.

So, this crayfish is the only parthenogenic decapod crustacean known to science! To this date even the scientists were not able to figure out what species this crayfish really is. They determined that it must be a Procambarus species, but it seems like the species has never been scientifically described. How do you scientifically describe a species of crayfish that only occurs in hobbyists' tanks, and nobody even knows where this species occurs naturally (if it occurs naturally at all)?

In any case....there we go. Now crayfish enthusiasts in the US and the rest of the world excluding Japan (I think these crayfish already made it to Japan) finally found out about this amazing creature.

More info on crayfish to follow in this forum and in a special "Crayfish Varieties" page soon.

Take care,
Mustafa

Here in Japan we call them Mystery Crayfish and there are currently 3 colour morphs-normal, blue and white.

HI Ed,

Do you know the japanese name of these crayfish? Do you have any links to pictures in Japan?

Mustafa

Mustafa wrote:HI Ed,

Do you know the japanese name of these crayfish? Do you have any links to pictures in Japan?

Mustafa

This should keep you busy for a little while. If your browser can read kanji then you can see what the Japanese call "Mystery Crayfish ?????????"

http://auction.msn.co.jp/dap/sv/list1?s ... 3%8a%81%5B

Add me to the list of Crayfish owners. I was inspired after your purchase Mustafa and picked up a brown one (sorry to not know the species name) at Petqua. It's fascinating.

Ari

aburstei wrote:Add me to the list of Crayfish owners. I was inspired after your purchase Mustafa and picked up a brown one (sorry to not know the species name) at Petqua. It's fascinating.

Ari

Hi Ari,

Welcome to the club of new crayfish owners. I've had crayfish before (Procambarus clarkii, the Red Swamp Crayfish, and Cabarellus shufeldtii, the dwarf crayfish) but it's been a while. I've had the dwarf crayfish (little breeding group) since January and now I also have the blue Procambarus alleni. Yesterday I received a third species of a very beautiful wild type crayfish, which is dark brown with white spots on its carapace and red spots on its sides. I'll post pictures and descriptions soon. The dwarf crayfish are breeding already and the other two species should be breeding soon, too.

As to the species name of your crayfish, try posting a picture if you have a digital camera handy and I'll give a shot at identifying them. Or, I will probably stop by at Petqua anyway and maybe he still has some of those crays left for me to identify. Having said that...we are living in the country and continent that has the greatest crayfish diversity anywhere in the world with new species being discovered every year. So, while the chances are good that your crayfish can be identified, there is still chance that you might have and undescribed species that someone caught in a river and sold to wholesalers. Lots of times these crayfish also arrive at the pet shops with shipments of pond-reared goldfish. They crayfish occupy the goldfish ponds and are netted and shipped right along with the goldfish...unintentionally. So..the pet stores get these crayfish as a free bonus (that's why they are so dirt cheap). Nevertheless, they are just as interesting as any other crayfish that costs 10 times as much.

Take care,
Mustafa

Congrats Mustafa on the opening of a new forum .. keep up the good work!

Hi Mustafa!

Good to have a crayfish forum also - a great idea
I currently have Cherax destructor, planning on getting some Procambarus clarki "Orange" and Cherax lorentzi

Hi folks,

I'm normally into shrimp, but I was reading some translated German websites a while back and came across Cambarellus patzcuarensis var orange. It's an orange variety of a crayfish from Mexico. I think their colouration is absolutely amazing and they only get to about 4 cm so they don't bother plants or fish (I don't know about shrimp though). Unfortunately, I think they are only sold in Germany and Holland, but maybe one day we can get them aound here!

Here's one of those German websites (sorry, I wish I could figure out how to insert a picture):

http://www.garnelenzucht.de/patzcuarensis.htm

Janis

Hi Janis !
It's not easy to keep that CPO (Cambarellus patzcuarensis var orange) - I gonna get some in late summer, but I heared about a lot of trouble with that crayfish. Many people loose their whole population of that shrimp not knowing why. And that crayfish liketo stay colder for some time.
Beautiful crayfish, and I hope that when I get some, they gonna go well.
Greetings, Flori

Thanks for the info Flori!

You'll have to let us know if you are successful at keeping them. I would really like to try them, especially if I don't need a heater in the tank, that just means cheaper electricity bills for me!

Janis