Baby Yabbies
When she got pregnant, it was time to rename “Marsellus” to get her gender correct. One of our yabbies got laid a few weeks ago, and right now she’s packing hundreds of baby yabbies underneath her tail. It’s quite a repulsive sight actually, but I’m sure once the yabbies mature they will be a bit cuter.
The piece of shell in the picture is a leftover from a recent moult
(or more accurately, a recent occurrence of ecdysis)
I went scouring for a bit more information about Yabby breeding habits, since I’ve heard that yabbies eat anything, and that anything includes their young. And if they don’t eat their young, then we still have a slight problem if nearly 100 baby yabbies are roaming around the tank.
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 16*C. 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 [oh shit], 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. … The yabby is not averse to attacking and eating its own kind, especially when the prey is smaller, or soft after moulting. (Src)
In courtship the male yabby uses his claws to impress the female. After mating the male has no interest at all in the upbringing of the young yabbies. The eggs which have been fertilised lies between the females rear legs so she curls her tail around them to cover them. Hundreds are laid at a time though not all hatch. After birth the young hang onto their mother for 4 to 6 weeks At this stage they are known as “Larvae”. (Src)
i have been raising yabbies for about a year and a half now, and everything has been going really well. in fact, 3 weeks after introducing a new female into the tank with my big male, she got pregnant. unfortunately i have not had another tank spare to move the female and the young ones to, and now i have around 70 to 100 baby yabbies roaming the tank. a problem has arisen from this, however, as i had an internal power filter running on the tank, but the babies were being sucked into the filter and i have taken it out. this leaves me with no filtration and no aeration, which brings me to my point. has anyone got any suggestions on how i might go about aerating the water? (Src)
Hmm. Yes, the aquarium’s going to be interesting over the next few weeks.
12:17am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow 
Fuck, so they were fucking in that log. You’ll have to rename that to something more appropriate too!
CONGRADULATIONS UNCLE STU!
I hope you’re adequately prepared for the responsibilities of bringing up young in the world. If not, you can always (illegally)release them into the wild. (Canetoads in Camden not to mention!)
Hi,my father has two giant tanks witch her uses to raise fish to eating size and since we got 120 fish in 1 u can guess that there pretty big and the way he airate his water is he has an electric are pump witch is hooked up to a tune witch is then feed into a type of stone bar witch has alot of fine hole in it and feels alot like sandstone, any way the air is pumped through the tube into this rock and the air comes out though the whole as little bubbles witch airates the water.
if your tank gets too full u could always do the following: sell them to restraints for food (if there big enough witch is 30g), sell them to pet stores or sell them to fishing stores as live bait (but the have to be only a few centimeter’s long eg: 4cm.
good luck!
I have a quesation my yabbies have hundreds of tiny leach like things on them what are they?
hey man im from australia and i was wondering how the bloody hell do tell the differance between females and males and for aeration your tank put some live plants in there for a while until you can put the filter back in
from jake
cya
i am having yabbie babbies i need to know if i can take the mum and the dad out andut them in another tank will it efect the babbies my yabbie is 8 weeks old and already pregnate
hey, my nmaes john if you want to tell if their boy or girl look on their underside, if they have two round figures on their 3rd pair of legs their a girl but if they have two round shaped figures on their last sets of legs then its a boy. enjoy , john
hey when the female yabbie is pregnant is it normal to eat the male??
Because i found a monster female and it ate the shit out of my fully grown male…
when it was pregnant
for your filter you can stretch ladies stocking over the intake and secure it with a rubber band. Also i must have an unusual male Yabbie, he is twice the size of my female – within the first week of the baby yabbies running around the male has taken most of the babies under his tail (like the female during pregnancy) Its strange i’ve not seen it before.
Just put a sponge filter in or put a air stone in or just clean the water daily
Is it normal for yabbies to rip each others claws off ? do I have 2 males I got some feeder yabbies for my fish and there were 2 that
survived I pulled them out of the tank ( a massive 8 footer ) and put them in the sump.
They would have to be near full grown and I think either one got its claws ripped off by the bigger one or it had a fight with the tank sump pump.
I have recently got rid of the yabbie eating fish so the clawless one is back in the big tank. It will be ok without its claws ?
Yeah, I think certain yabbies get quite hostile with others. At one point I had two yabbies in the tank – a big one which terrorised the small one and kept ripping off its appendages. As long as the clawless one can still eat, it should be fine and should also start growing back its claws when it next moults.
i looked undder my yabbys set off legs it waird be cause some had big curciles on its back legs but on 3 they had absaloutly no cuciles on anny of there legs help me !!!!!!
female yabbys have 2 small circle spots on there 2nd pair of, thats how to tell there sex lil legs and the males have 2 pimple or lumps on ther last set of lil legs
nah kim your WRONG, females have 2 rings on there THIRD set of legs, love !!!THE YABBIE HUNTER!!!
what tastes better, male or female yabbie?
just had babies, should i take both parents out or just the daddy?
Im not too fussed if the babies live or die but it would be interesting to watch one grow.