Electric Blue Crawfish

      My first experience with the Electric Blue Crayfish, Procambarus alleni, was to purchase a bag of three adults at the Keystone Killie Club picnic held at my house on August 18, 2012.  I got babies from that trio and raised them to adulthood, and got more babies again.  All of this activity was with the crays all together in a 15 gallon tank.  In that batch there was a berried female that I isolated to a 2 gallon tank, where she released all of her babies about a month later.  Shortly after that I separated babies into various tanks and counted them during the process.  178 babies!  I should be swimming in crawfish.

My largest male, December 20th, 2014

      Over time, the general wisdom about the babies being cannibalistic proved to be true.  Out of the brood of 178 babies, I managed to save only five to about the two inch size, less five that I was smart enough to sell as babies.  So it was time to try to breed them, as no new berried females were noticed.  I had separated my one large and five smaller adults to save them all.  Figured out how to sex them, and discovered my problem. All males.  Last month I visited with the buyer of my five babies.  Alas, he had only one survivor, which also was a male.  The seller of my original trio apparently has lost his crays, so I was in a pickle with six males. Having found no luck tracking down any crays at all in local stores, I started following Aquabid, where I had never had the courage to make a purchase.  Well, now I had no choice.
     http://onestopaquatics.com/ had several listings of blue crays, and after several email exchanges with Jerry, I arranged to buy five females at 8 dollars each, plus 17 dollars shipping.  They arrived yesterday packed in separate little bags, and I left them overnight in small containers.  One had actually shed during her trip in the mailing box.  This was my first transaction with Aquabid, and I think it and One Stop to be good for more business.
     Here is a good site for info on blue crays: Aqua-terra Crayfish care.  There is useful info on how to breed the crays, so I put a female in with a male, and he tried to mate with her immediately.  He was aggressive, and pulled off a claw, so I removed the female to a separate tank to recover.  A second female went in with a Form II male, and no mating occurred within twenty minutes.  The female was a bit small anyway, so she went to a grow out tank.  A third pairing resulted in breeding behavior immediately, and the female was within the male's embrace for about 15 minutes.  Upon separation, she was moved to an isolation tank where she hopefully will berry after receiving a sperm packet from the mating. The female that had molted in the bag is in an isolation tank to harden off before I try to breed her.  A fourth female was put in with a different male that turned out to be very aggressive, so she was taken out.  Upon further reflection, I concluded that the females would benefit from resting and feeding after their shipping experience.  So after day one:

           Female #1:  Claw ripped off, put to recovery
           Female #2:  In with Form II male, put to grow out tank
           Female #3:  Apparently successful mating, put to separate tank to berry
           Female #4:  Smallish, put to grow out tank
           Female #5:  Smallish, put to grow out tank

Same cray from above