Breeding Yabbies

[saikrett]

just wondering if anyone had tryed breeding yabbies for turtles? Just wanted to know about feeding, housing, breeding cycle etc

thanks,
Scott

[roadkill5000]

im not sure about the breeding cycle but feeding and housing is easy.for food you can get disks from a pet shop, the ones ive kept i found them eating the algae off the walls of the tank aswell,they also eat mosquito larvae and other bugs you find living in or near water. for housing the bigger the better as they can get territorial if too many males are in the same area.stick some hollow logs in or pvc pipe for shelter and a filter. if you can get an old bathtub somewhere and put mesh over the top and cover the drain you can keep them outside and i have found this the best way for breeding them but it has to be covered when it rains or kept under shelter as it will fill and the yabbies can escape.

hope this helps

[saikrett]

thanks
does anybody know where i could get some yabbies?

[roadkill5000]

nearly every pet shop will have them

[africancichlidau]

In a yabbie shop No seriously, have you seen the size of new born yabs? They are simply miniscule, I think you would have a hard time raising them to an acceptable size for turtles. JMO

[roadkill5000]

Reproduction
The sex of a yabby can be determined quite easily. The reproductive or genital papillae of the male crayfish are short projections on the bases of the last pair of walking legs; the female has oval openings on the bases of the third-last pair of legs. It is common (1 in 20) to find individuals with a combination of male and female openings. These ‘intersexes’ usually prove to be of one sex and can function sexually; they are rarely true hermaphrodites able to produce both eggs and sperm.

The female yabby reaches sexual maturity when about 9 to 10 centimetres long - the male when slightly smaller. (Length is measured from the tip of the rostrum - the spine between the eyes - to the end of tail fan.) Nearly all mature females spawn, but the majority of young recruited to the population are produced by the 2 year olds, as they outnumber the older age groups.

When freshwater crayfish mate, the male deposits a small packet of sperm gel on the female, near the reproductive openings. The female then passes the eggs out through the openings and across the sperm packet, during which process they become fertilised. The eggs are guided to the underside of the tail (kept cupped during egg laying), where they are fastened on to the swimmerettes (the small legs on the abdomen) and carried until they hatch. Juveniles have special hooks on their legs to allow them to cling to the hairs of the female’s swimmerettes; they moult several times before leaving the parent.

The female protects the eggs carefully. If the level of dissolved oxygen falls, she elevates her tail and fans the eggs. If the water becomes too warm, she will find a cooler place. However, because the eggs are large, and because of the time and energy she devotes to them, she can afford to produce only a few hundred compared with the hundreds of thousands of relatively minute eggs of the marine lobsters. The newly hatched young are known as ‘juveniles’; they resemble the adults and do not pass through the free-living larval stages of lobsters, prawns and many other crustaceans. The juvenile yabby is consequently better equipped for survival than the young of most of the marine crustaceans and not as vulnerable to predation.

Breeding begins in spring when the water temperature reaches 15 to 16oC. The first batch of eggs (100 to 500 eggs per individual, depending upon the size of the female) hatches 8 to 10 weeks later in early summer. As soon as the young have left (a further 3 weeks later), the female is ready to breed again. Because of the higher water temperatures in summer, the second brood takes only 3 to 4 weeks to incubate. Some females will breed three or more times during the breeding season, which, if the temperature remains high enough, can extend into autumn. In the warmer water in the west of the State, the breeding season may continue almost year around

[roadkill5000]

also afro it only me a little over a year to get the to 10 cm which is fair size for a turtle. keep them at about 25 degrees with plenty of food and the tank not very crowded and this can be done easily.

[saikrett]

thanks
i've also got some smaller turtles so i would want varying sizes
10 cm sounds massive for a turtle, i was thinking along the lines of more yabbies at about 5cm.

[roadkill5000]

well that will take roughly 5 or so months

[africancichlidau]

Thanks for that Roadkill, just goes to show that you are never too OLD to learn something new

[roadkill5000]

no worries

[Alexahnder]

i got my yabbies from a yabbie farm. They were about 5 cm long and were 50 cents each

[saikrett]

where abouts is that alexahnder?

[Alexahnder]

it was near forster but i'm sure there would be places closer to sydney

[Greebo]

One thing I found out as a kid, is never put tadpoles and yabbies together. I still remember the smell from the carnage.