What is the rarest type of crayfish?

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cuban jey;3799354; said:
the AquaBid invertebrate section has alot of fiff species for sale. i bought a m/f pair of sp; irian jaya from a seller named DGA hes a awesome guy and great to deal with also has the best packaging procedure ive ever seen. good luck on the search!
No, those were C.peknyis you bought from him. They look sorta the same so maybe you got the picture confused. DGA (& most others) call them "Tiger" or "Zebra" crays. The only difference between the 2 is the width of the stripes on their backends. The Peknyis I got from DGA were real sick and missing limbs. It took forever for them to heal up and molt out of it. He's a great packager but he doesn't know crayfish very well and he'll tell you that himself.
 
after searching, i was not aware of true irian jaya were available. but hoa creek are.... hmmm.

anyways, anybody know if we can get Cherax setosus
 
here is my male rainbow irian jaya from dga i couldnt get pic of female because she is molting and i didnt want disturb here

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ZOMG WHT SITE OR WHO U GET IT FROM!!!
 
NICE FIND!! auqabid hunh? hmmm
 
This is a nice thread! The Irian Jaya a region of the pacific islands that some of the newer-to-the-hobby cherax crayfish originate. It isn't the specific name of any crayfish--just a location. I have one Cherax sp. rainbow and she is very shy. I mean very shy as in only comes out a night and if she sees me belly crawling up to the tank--she darts away and hides shy! :irked: There are many cherax species (as well as North American species) that are not yet scientifically identified so you get many common names for the same crays. The Cherax species generally need the water heated where North American crays generally do not need heated water. My rainbow is good at around 75 degrees.

As far as the rarest species in the trade; I think this is an impossible question to answer. I have a native crayfish in my collection as do many cray keepers. Has it been specifically identified? Where did it come from? Is it an offshoot of a readily identifiable cray that morphed in a ecological niche? In areas where once there were a large population of a particular cray, the habitat has been destroyed for development so a once numerous cray suddenly becomes 'rare' almost overnight. Also, crayfish are not scientifically studied as much as other aquatic species so there are large gaps in data.

Crayfish are notoriously difficult to identify--some cannot even be identified by specialists in the field and become controversial (such as the Cherax sp. rainbow) among the people who study crayfish. It takes years to properly identify a new species so for all the above reasons, and many more reasons that I haven't addressed, there is no way to name the 'rarest' crayfish.

The crayfish you hold in your hand is the rarest crayfish and should be treated as such. :)
 
Nicely put, Bubbles. This thread is cool, I just learned a little. I have Procambarus Clarkii and Cambarus (Puncticambarus) coosae (or something similar) in my backyard creek.. I love them, they make great pets. They have been breeding lately!
 
I caught a big rusty crayfish with 3 claws, probably a fluke though, had 1 regular claw and the second claw has an extra claw growing out of the top prong, was a sickly black colour too, sorry no pics
 
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