Berried crayfish

eroomlorac

eroomlorac

Happy as a clam
Mar 18, 2008
218
0
16
Farm Country, Northern Illinois
I have two crayfish in an outdoor tub. They are in with some white clouds and some zebra danios. I saw the two crays mating about two weeks ago. Today I was doing a water change in the tub and decided to check on the crays since they are always hiding under the broken clay pots or in the pvc pipes I have in there. I saw one cray under a clay pot and I picked up the pvc pipe to find the other cray. In the pvc pipe was the female cray with very many eggs under her tail. I have no idea what kind of crays. I live in Northern Illinois and they are something native to the area. I bought them from a local pet shop but was told they were brought in by someone who caught them locally. What can I expect? How long until they hatch? What, if anything, should I do to help the babies survive? The tub is pretty heavily planted with live plants (hornwort and foxtail) and I have a fake, square groundcover/grass looking thing anchored to the bottom of the tub. Several pieces of broken clay pot and pvc pipes about 1.5 inches wide. I feed these crays shrimp pellets and a pretty wide variety of frozen foods, mysis shrimp, brine shrimp, mosquito larvae, blood worms, etc. I'm wondering how soon to expect to see teeny, tiny crays.
 
The baby crays will more than likely cannibalize their siblings. This is natural of course. I can't say on how long before they hatch b/c I only keep dwarfs and I'm not sure if it's the same for the larger species.
 
I am no expert so this information may be incorrect--take it with a grain of salt. But to the best of my knowledge most crays spend about one month in the egg stage with variances of up to two weeks longer depending on the type of cray, temp, nutrition etc. Some will stay with mom clinging to her swimmerets for some additional time of a few days to a couple of weeks and they drop off her at different times. The parenting abilities vary from species to species and some moms will eat their young and some will not eat all of their young and some won't eat their young. Some crays like their diets heavy with protein and some do not so you are covered as you have lots of plant material in the tub already. The babies will eat micro-growth within the tub as well as picking up bits of food here and there so adding some brown (not green) dried leaves to the bottom of the tub will provide some important nutrition and cover for the babies. My guess is that the fish will eat up most of the babies but a few may survive. I'd like to help you ID the type of cray--but there are so many different kinds out there I am not really good at it. A good place to start would be the dept of fisheries and wildlife in your state--sometimes they have native (and invasive) crayfish listed. Another place to begin your search is to post pictures here as someone much more knowledgeable than myself should see this and may help out! Also an excellent resource is located at http://iz.carnegiemnh.org/crayfish/Keys/index2.htm
 
My dwarf crays (CPOs) take 3 weeks to hatch and 1 week to start walking off the mother. So a total of 4 weeks (1 month) till you start seeing baby crays walking around. If you feed them well, they won't cannibalize on each other. Feeding is key for stopping the young from killing each other.

I don't know exactly how long it'll take for larger species though. Could be around the same is my best guess. Grats and goodluck!
 
Thank you very much for the information. I certainly don't expect all the babies to live as I think I would have over a hundred! I would be happy to see a few babies grow. I suspect they will be awfully cute. I am going to try to ID the crays I have. Thanks again.
 
Yadokari said:
If you feed them well, they won't cannibalize on each other. Feeding is key for stopping the young from killing each other.
Click to expand...

I can attest to the fact that I was well fed as a child- and we only ever ate one of our siblings so this might very well be true.

Although- I'm not a crayfish so I can only attest to this for human-like animals.
 
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