Dwarf Crayfish
October 26th, 2006Last weekend at the Catfish Convention, I picked up two pairs of dwarf crayfish. They weren’t labeled so I don’t know their exact species, but I’m guessing they’re cambarellus shufeldtii. I was told that they’re pretty easy to breed, so I have them in a tank all by themselves with some wood and java moss, so we’ll see what happens. Thus far, they seem to be pretty timid creatures. If I get near the tank, you see a quick flurry of activity while they flee from wherever they were at to their new “hiding place.” Once there, they tend to stay perfectly still until I leave. I had a scare the night that I put them in the tank. I came back about 2 hours later and saw one of them laying sideways, motionless, and dead. It took me a second to see something behind it, chewing on the dead one. Infact, it wasn’t dead at all. It molted!
If I do pretty well with these guys, I might try splurging for those fancy orange dwarf crayfish that are going around aquabid these days. Before I do that, I’m going to have to figure out how to sex the ones I have. The guy I bought them from showed that the males have an extra pair of legs under the tail, where the females do not. What seemed quite apparent at the moment, isn’t so obvious when I look at them after getting them home. If anyone has any pointers on this, please comment.
October 26th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
Of course I have no idea how to sex crayfish, but I just wanted to let you know that this picture is great!
November 27th, 2006 at 9:59 am
I got the orange crayfish, and it’s been a disappointment. They seem to be fairly aggresive. One is left and and you can’t make a breeding colony out of one!
November 27th, 2006 at 10:05 am
Really? That’s too bad. It was my understanding that the orange ones were just color morphs of the regular ones. The brown ones I have seem to be pretty relaxed. I believe one is holding eggs.
March 10th, 2007 at 2:45 am
No, C. shufeldtii and C. patzcuarensis (the orange one you describe) are different species. Although the wild forms of each look similar to one another.
March 11th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Ah, thanks for the clarification, Lane!
June 13th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
I have found one of my orange dead today it had a piece of a head missing i think the other one killed him while molting,How much do you feed them and with what?My only like the frozen live food,They won`t eat anything else.I had them together with my green shrimps and i saw them trying to catch the shrimps,so i moved the shrimps to another tank.I think they are quite agresive.i getting another female next week and i will see what happens,maybe there should be one male and 3 or 4 females to evenly divide the agresion on them!?
June 14th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Neo, I’m sorry to hear about your dead crayfish. I don’t have any of these crayfish any longer, but when I did, I fed that freeze dried foods and pellets, and also a homemade shrimp food that I got on APC a long while back. (Unfortunately I don’t remember who or what that food was.)
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:10 am
[…] member’s house, Dave (ingg), and I wanted to share a couple pictures of his Dwarf Crayfish. I have kept this kind of crayfish before, and even had them breed for me, but I don’t have them any longer. They’re […]