So maybe you have had your pet crayfish a little while and you are ready to breed them and have more crayfish. Okay, cool. Put on some Marvin Gaye and see what happens, or maybe not. That’s your decision. Anyway, here are some tips for breeding crayfish from home.
Let’s take a closer look at the process.
Breeding Crayfish from Home: A Guide
Do Crayfish Breed at Specific Times?
For the most part, crayfish don’t have any regular breeding times or any type of schedule. So this can actually help you out when breeding crayfish from home.
Pet crayfish can, may, and will breed at any time, kind of like young folks do. Although if you feed them just right, and keep the water in good shape by doing water changes as you should, you may help your pet crayfish make a love connection and create some babies. (A little alcohol and loud country music may also help some too, I don’t know.)
Breeding Crayfish From Home: The Process
The process to breed crayfish, however, can be a bit frustrating with pet crayfish under any circumstances.
Here’s what happens.
If you are breeding crayfish at home for the first time, you may want to take some notes.
How Your Pet Crayfish Breed
- The male will deposit a sack of sperm on the female who at that point will pass her eggs through the sperm to fertilize them.
- From there, the eggs will be kept under the tail of the female. And note, at this point, you will want to remove the female and place her in her own tank.
- After a few weeks, about four, baby crayfish will appear. They will receive all of the love and baby crayfish care they need from mama crayfish.
Careful with the Baby Crayfish
However, crayfish are known to eat each other. So after a few short days, take the female out of the tank. The last thing you want is to have mom eat her babies. That could be a traumatic experience. Especially if there are children in the house.
From this point, you will have to feed the babes on your own. You should feed them greens like lettuce and cabbage to start with. Later, your crayfish can eat sinking pellets and will have other choices in food.
The same rule that applied to the mom will need to apply to the larger crayfish that start to emerge. They too will need to be removed so that they do not totally devour the smaller crayfish.
Breeding crayfish from home isn’t always that easy. It can take some time and it requires some patience. But, if done right, can lead to more beautiful crayfish.