New Yabbies

[Slartibartfast]

Yes, we're all very proud here at the moment, she (Brenda the Yabbie) is releasing her littlies as I type this. Here are some pics I've just taken with some young ones around her. She's about 8cm long - they are about 6-7mm long! Sorry about the quality of some, I had tears in my eyes!

[lizzieb]

Congratulations on so many beautiful babies!

Thanks ever so much for adding the close-ups - I was about to ask for a microscope!

[Mother]

Congratulations Richard you are now a father!!!

[Slartibartfast]

Brenda (the girl Yabbie) has released most of them now, it takes a few days. As soon as the last one is free I'll pop her back with the old man in the main tank so she doesn't start eating them.

[sunray18]

ah how sweet - I hope she doesnt become like our ferocious monster.. she eats every male after she makes sure she is carrying eggs.. then she eats all her young if I am not quick enough to collect them. She even leaps out of the water to try to take my fingers off when I am tending the tank.This year she has despatched 2 new yabbies already - oh she is expensive to feed at $5.50 a pop!

[Sassi]

Hello Slartibartfast!

What do you feed your yabbies to condition them to spawn? I wanna make yabbie babies

[Slartibartfast]

Yabbies are happiest when left alone with a good size tank and plenty of hiding spots. Mine are in a big tank in my busiest lab but the students know not to bother them.

Have a male that is larger than the female to stop the aggresive behaviour and remove her to a remote tank as soon as the eggs (berries) under her tail lose their burgundy colour.

Keep her well fed when by herself and with yabbies in general as they only eat each other when starving or there is a territory battle going on amongst yabbies of vastly different sizes.

My breeding pair (Neil & Brenda) pine for one another when seperated so I keep the time away minimal. You should see when I put her back - it makes me blush and as a result she's now expecting again. Be mindful, it can take a while for a pair to mate and sometimes it may never happen. Put one of each sex in a tank together with no threatening species in there as well (goldfish are perfect) and if neither try and oust the other they will fall madly in love and start planning a family together.

They like murky water and are tollerant of a wide range of pH & water temps also. They will eat lots of diffent food and LOVE carrot.

You can tell the sex of them this way:

Yabbie reproductive.doc

[Ian]

Congratulations Richard!
Does that make you a Grandpa?

regards
Ian

[Ian]

ah how sweet - I hope she doesnt become like our ferocious monster.. she eats every male after she makes sure she is carrying eggs.. then she eats all her young if I am not quick enough to collect them. She even leaps out of the water to try to take my fingers off when I am tending the tank.This year she has despatched 2 new yabbies already - oh she is expensive to feed at $5.50 a pop!

A friend told me the story of the pet Yabbie that she had in an outdoor Gold fish pond. As the weeks went by, the fish got less and less, until, finally there were NO fish left. About a week later, the yabbie was last seen marching down the path toward the back yard CHOOK pen!!!

regards
Ian

[lada]

Good one,Ian
just for that I give you extra karma.
But I have a similar story. My young nephew had tropical fish, some expensive. He had a barra, tiny little thing, some tropical colourful fish and one day he caught a yabbie. next day there was few fish less and the rest as they say is history...
Have a good weekend
lada

[Sassi]

No yabbie babies for me... Came to work this morning and found my yabbie belly up in the tank She was looking a bit pale yesterday so I checked pH, nitrate and nitrites all were very good. Then I fed her and she happily ate... Then this morning...

[Slartibartfast]

Sad to hear it Sassi. Had she been moved recently or anything else that may have stressed her? Nothing liquid added to the tank by a student? Do you have a water heater set to about 22 - 25deg C?

They are massively tollerant of water condition - even drought so something has upset her. They are resiliant to so much that harms other aquatic life also, mainly only being affected by things that cause their shell to deteriorate.

Uneaten/rotting food is a cause for problems also as they will readily eat it. Mine LOVE carrot and small bits of lettuce and I like it as it's much cleaner to the tank and easy to remove in a day or two.

Had she shedded recently? It's a sign of happy growth plus they eat their old shells which are a high source of protein for them.

She sounds like she was a fair size! 5cm on average body length equates to about 12 months old. If they get much bigger than that the tank needs to start getting to be quite large to house them.

Just double check she has passed on because a lot of them sleep on their backs. True! I'll post a piccy soon.

[Sassi]

Thanks Slartibartfast! My poor yabbie was very well looked after, she had not been moved, right temp, and a clean tank, no rotting food particles. The only thing I can think of is that during the holidays, we got an algae bloom, so maintenance who got the job of looking after her, bought an algae fix, which they used weekly. When I got back from holidays I noticed straight away that yabbie did not look well at all and started an investigation and discovered that the algae fix actually was poisonous to crustaceans. So I immediatley did an 80% water change and after that daily 20% water changes a day for a week and a bit, so that we could flush out the poison. Yabbie got better and has been better since, until I found her this morning, and she was definetly dead, she was floating on the surface. Tank is quite large, with only a couple of hides, so maybe she was stressed, but she was all alone in tank. I checked the pH this morning and it had droped from 7.8 to 6, how that happened I dont now. Its very sad

[Slartibartfast]

Algae bloom? Is the tank in the sun at any time of the day? Do you run charcoal in your filters and/or have a biofilter?

Algae can kill yabbies pretty quickly as it thrives on their gill openings. Keep the tank away from sunlight if possible and run the above filter. Make it as much as a dam or creek you possibly can and you should have no worries.

I now it's cold of me but are you able to replace her? Maybe with a smaller couple.

Let me know!

[Sassi]

Hello labbieland!

Kids are on athletics carneval, so I am having a qiute day and thought I spend it doing some research... and thus came across this wich I thought might interest some of you people out there keeping yabbies.

Enjoy