Breeding crayfish?

[mikkisixx]

Hey guys,
I wish in my lfs the other day and saw that they had just gotten in a batch of "feeder crayfish" and I was thinking that would be a great idea to add some more variety to my stingray's diet. I didn't buy any because I never feed any "feeder anything" to my fish before conditioning them first and I didn't have a tank set up for that but it really got me thinking about possibly breeding crayfish. So does anybody have any info on this? Which tank size would I need? How many crayfish should I get? Sexing? Any any other info that you could give would Be greatly appreciated
THank you

 

[Fat Homer]

If your breeding the regular types of Crays, you'll need a reasonably large tank due to the aggression between them and the potential for them to eat their off-spring... so i would guess your looking at nothing less than around 30G+ for a pair of crays...

Otherwise, if you can find Marble Crays, you could start off with maybe 4 in a 25G+ and not have to worry about sexing them since they reproduce asexually which means they are all female...

So just depends on what sort of crays your planning on breeding..

 

[Chicklette]

How can you sex them? I think they breed the human way, the male goes on top of the female and they mate.

 

[FishingOut]

How can you sex them? I think they breed the human way, the male goes on top of the female and they mate.

After the last leg appendage is the sexual organ. You can find references if you search google. They are not too hard to sex.

Breeding is more like rape, Haha i wouldnt consider that the human way. Breeding normal crays is pretty much a waiting process IF they even mate. A tank is much different than the natural selection process. Your better off going with marbles, Which is usually what "feeder crays" are. These reproduce rapidly by cloning and creating exact genetic replicas of themselves. Great food source for most carnivorous fish.

 

[mikkisixx]

Thanks guys for the replies; they are definetely appreciated I'm not sure what kind of crayfish my lfs has. I'll have to see if they are marbles. It seems like it would only be worth attempting to breed them if they were indeed marbles.

 

[Fat Homer]

Marbles would be the easiest way to bred crays as a sustainable food source thats for sure, since as others have mentioned, normal crays may or may not mate in your tank once you get them home...