Marbled Crayfish Updates! *babies!*

[comocrayfish5]

it has been a while since the last time i posted about my self cloning marbled crayfish!
 
momma cray has been growing up and continues to have bigger batches of babies. this recent batch has hatched and started roaming. things were going slow, so i put a heater in and more began to roam.
 

 

 

 
more babies roaming and the tank was still getting up to temp

 
i was thinking that this was a lot of babies, but i found out that was really not that much!

 

 
and then today came, the tank was up to temp and the there was a population explosion of roaming babies. the awesome thing is that there are still more on her tail.

 
they are all eating and i hope to set up a temporary baby tank so i can raise them until they get a little bigger… and then they will be put in the real baby tank with momma crays first batch. they are an endless supply of feeders!

 

 
feel free to ask questions

 
 
**if you do not like these crayfish and are against them, please do not post negative comments.  they are strictly pets and i am neither selling them nor am i ever going to release them. thank you**

 

[EllieJellyEllie]

Aww! They look like little shrimp when they are babies!


How did you get mom and how expensive was she?

 

[comocrayfish5]

I got momma cray off of eBay for $8. If you are planning to get one, make sure that they are legal in your state if you get a small one, they will start with batches of about 25-50 babies. It is nice to have a baby tank to have them grow up in and use the rest of the batches after that as feeders, but it would also be easy to feed them out or freeze them for later I have one of momma crays babies from the first batch in her own tank and she also has a batch now. They are really easy keepers other thank the fact that they have babies every few months! Once all my fish die I plan to get some "real" crayfish and breed them.

 

[BelldandyShanny]

neat!

 

[EllieJellyEllie]

Wow! What size tank do you have her in? And how do you breed them?

Im interested now

 

[comocrayfish5]

she is in a 10 gallon. when her babies are independent, i will move them into a 10gallon of their own to grow a little. 
 
momma crays tank used to be nicely planted, but then she up rooted some plants
 

 
i have a 20 gallon baby tank that her first batch lives in. they are about a year old and are about 1-2 inches now. i used to have 20 in there, but one of them was molting and vulnerable and he got eaten yesterday, so now there is 19!
this is when i first set up the tank. the babies weren't put in yet. the pic after is how big the babies were when i put them in the tank
 

 
 

 
this is a pic from a few days ago. as you can see the babies are much bigger and have rearranged the tank to how they like it. most of them, if not all of them, have already had several batches of babies. their babies have all been eaten, which is sad, but its not like i am going to run out any time soon. they do better with similar sized crays. marbleds can be kept in colonies with very minimal fighting. i would love to get a 40 gal for them, but i don't have the money or the time.
 

 

 
 
 
for breeding, their name says it all: self cloning. and they do just that. once they are mature, they will lay eggs on their tail. it is that simple. this is why they are illegal in so many places, they can just multiply and invade and kill of other species. this is also another reason why they make good feeders for fish

all marbled crayfish are female too.
 
this was momma crays first batch of eggs. the eggs are grey. if i remember correctly, her eggs are now a dark gray or black since she is older. this batch was actually quite big. some of my babies have been smaller than her when they had their first batch.
 

 
for the longest time before she had this batch, i really had doubt to whether such a crayfish would be real. once the i saw the eggs, i knew it was true. this batch was successful and hatched. it was such a fun experience taking care of baby crayfish for the first time
 
this is a 12 day old baby (and she is probably all grown up now too)

 
they do grow fast

 

 
this is momma cray jr., one of her the babies from her first batch who i separated and kept in my 20 gal goldfish tank. the tank is now a tropical tank and M.C. jr has her own 10 gal and her own batch of babies at the moment. she is much bigger than the rest of her sisters.
 
she was small then, she is now about 2-3 inches long
 

 
she eventually had a batch of babies. if i remember correctly, all of these babies were dropped from her swimmerets and died. this will happen sometimes and i am not sure why. 

 
anyways… i could go on and on about these guys

 
i hopefully at some point will be getting other crayfish to actually breed. i will probably start with cheap ones and work my way up to electric blue and definitely electric orange crayfish. i have educated my self on breeding them to prepare for the future.
 
i can answer more questions about marbleds or breeding regular crays 

 

[EllieJellyEllie]

Aww they are so cute.

I think if I ever need food for fish or just want some cryfidh I will start with these! They look amazing and the babies look like ghost shrimp. Haha.

It also looks like they arent illegal here in Virginia. Thats awesome.

If you have more pictures, you can go on and on, I will be here

 

[Ryan10]

I didn't know they had that many babies at once. Nice.

 

[comocrayfish5]

Aww they are so cute.

I think if I ever need food for fish or just want some cryfidh I will start with these! They look amazing and the babies look like ghost shrimp. Haha.

It also looks like they arent illegal here in Virginia. Thats awesome.

If you have more pictures, you can go on and on, I will be here

When I get home I can post more pictures

I didn't know they had that many babies at once. Nice.

If she get any bigger, it is possible for crayfish to have batches if 500-600 babies!

 

[comocrayfish5]

now it will just be random pictures….
 
this was still the first batch, but i divided the tank.

 
this is comparing the runt of the batch with the biggest one

 

 
another batch of eggs...

 
eating a frozen pea

 

 
these were some babies near 1" PVC

 
when i first but the babies in the 20gal baby tank...

 

 

 
M.C. had another batch and i didn't see as many in the tank. i looked in the filter and...
ta-da! this is how many babies managed to sneak into the filter. i keep the intake covered with netting, but on some filters they can go under it. i have to do daily checks of the filter

 
crayfish are my favorite kind of aquatic animal (if you couldn't tell)
 

 
and just for the heck of it... i can't forget about Kabob, my only non-marbled crayfish. he is about 4-5 years old

 

 
he is also my biggest cray

 

 

 

[BelldandyShanny]

you'd think they would make a great human food source as well as feeders! (not in a home aquarium though!) Seem like they'd be easy to farm.

 

[comocrayfish5]

I think I have read that they dont taste very good, but I am not sure