Cambarellus diminutus - why gone from USA

[Edj05]

My shufeldtii are not full grown yet but I have not noticed any significant aggression. They could be picking off cories, but they will have their own tank soon. I'll keep an eye out for your update later on, it will be interesting to hear about the new crays. You certainly posed an interesting question in the beginning.. the one or two sites I have seen offering native fish/inverts may have listed shufeldtii or a larger cray, but I never saw diminutus. Another poster mentioned it may have to do with their numbers in the wild, so if legality is not the issue of collecting, perhaps it's just a matter of difficulty. Sellers may have figured patzcuarensis and/or shufeldtii would adequately meet the demand for smaller/less aggressive crays, and shrimp would entertain the rest.

 

[MacMyers]

I keep 4 shufeldtii with some Neocaridina Red and see no aggression issues at all. There are lots of hides however.

 

[spypet]

great news! my Diminutus finally arrived from Germany and are acclimating now.
I'll post some photos as soon as I can get my auto focus P&S to focus on them.

several Germans advised me to keep the CPO and Diminutus in separate tanks,
not because of their size difference, but that CPO are far more aggressive crayfish.
I was happy to hear this, since the whole point of getting Diminutus was to find
a crayfish species that was NOT aggressive when compared to most other Dwarfs.

so the Diminutus will go in my cool shrimp tank,
and the CPO will go in my warm nano fish tank.

 

[spypet]

you can get an idea how small c.diminutus. here you see (lower right of center) a young adult with two adult shrimp (yellow & crystal) behind tiny ET leaves. the joke is I just ordered some babalti.green which will be much bigger than this crayfish. unlike the CPO which were out exploring their new tank within hours, the c.diminutus have not been out from undercover all day. I just hope they don't turn out to be as shy as micro crabs. c.diminutus must love my baked clay substrate as I see them half bury in it, and their color matches it perfectly. they are rumored (and photographed) to color shift, so it will be interesting to see if that occurs. this is an odd photo cause i had to use flash.

 

[koldsoup]

Glad you got your crays! Hopefully, you can introduce this cray into the hobby.

I read through the thread. Why did you say that marmorkrebs shouldn't be in the hobby? I thought it was so fascinating that they can reproduce on their own that I had to pick one up.

 

[spypet]

koldsoup see: http://marmorkrebs.blogspot.com/search/label/invasive species

a native AMERICAN crayfish rescued from Europe

 

[spypet]

looks like my shy c.diminutus have been doing the nasty
notice they only carry about a dozen berries, and those
SMS substrate grains she's on, are only 1-2mm across.

 

[2rivers]

WOW! Diminutus. I always learn tons from spypet. Thanks for doing all the homework and giving me great ideas about native crays. keep the pics coming. I enjoy your knowledge, I havent had a computer for long so all your great links helped me

 

[SubRosa]

If you get young I'd be very interested.

 

[spypet]

as expected, my diminutus have blue shifted - photo without flash and with flash.
over a week ago I added a blue/gray slate item to the tank, and some cray adapted.
so now I have blue and brown diminutus in the tank at the same time, but trying
to get both shy crayfish in the same photo may take a while...

here's the brown one, and that new blue/gray root display I added to the tank.