sexing crayfish

[Sean_Buckley]

Hi, I was wondering, is there any visible difference between the crayfish genders? The crayfish I have are just run-of-the-mill, regular crayfish, that you would find in a stream.
Sean

 

[Narayan]

There are two ways to know if your crayfish is male or female. The first way, a guy at maidenhead aquatics tried to show me but I couldnt quiet see it, D'oh.

The way I tell if my grown crays are male or female is that the female has small claws and the male has one big claw and one smaller one, however the male I have at the moment has two big claws, you will notice the difference. They are bigger and fatter. I hope that made sense to you.

 

[samthefishman]

Well that is not always true Narayan, actually barely ever! Yes Males have thinker claws, but sometimes its varies.
The ONLY way you can tell is;
Female: on the third set of legs their will be 2 hole looking things where their legs join to the body. (1 hole on each leg, only the third set)
Male: Their last pair of legs they will have not exactly penis looking things but little bumps where the legs join to the body. (1 hole on each leg, last pair of legs)

Its quite hard to see when they are young, but when they get biger and older the males organs will turn a purple/blue colour and it will be quite obvious.

Hope this helps

 

[Narayan]

Well that is not always true Narayan, actually barely ever! Yes Males have thinker claws, but sometimes its varies.
The ONLY way you can tell is;
Female: on the third set of legs their will be 2 hole looking things where their legs join to the body. (1 hole on each leg, only the third set)
Male: Their last pair of legs they will have not exactly penis looking things but little bumps where the legs join to the body. (1 hole on each leg, last pair of legs)

Its quite hard to see when they are young, but when they get biger and older the males organs will turn a purple/blue colour and it will be quite obvious.

Hope this helps

Thanks samthefishman, thats what I was trying to remember the other night but as I couldn't quiet see it when it was pointed out.... er... I guess it didn't sink in. But my current personal experience of telling male from female is as above.

Thanks for the extra info though

Most helpful

As usual

 

[samthefishman]

I used to tell them by the claws to.
But recently we pulled a whole bunch out from the tank and found that most of the females claws were bigger/fater then the males it was quite unusual! So my boss told me to to judge a book by its cover