Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

As a newly addicted AP'st one of criteria for designing our system was to minimise external inputs such as food, power etc, see early design brief;
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=6424

By far the best performing area of the system to date are the Yabbies, commencing with 12 large ones some of which were in "berry" when they arrived, have swelled to an estimated 300+ juveniles ranging from 6mm to 75mm (and more probably on the way). From their original 900lt tank they are now in every part of the system via the gravity pipe work. This is all in less than 6 months!
Their incredible fertility is one of my major reasons that I have developed such fondness for yabbies
they are also incredibly tough as one of the forum members called them " Barbarians of the crayfish world"
I'm sure they also produce large volumes of nutritious waste for the GB's
They grow quickly
Easy to feed
They clean up the bottom of the tanks
They are easy to catch and they taste great
I'm looking forward to eating my first Silver perch which will be covered with a yabbie, garlic, ginger, chili and spring onion butter sauce!
From my knowledge of yabbies one of the biggest problems is that they can be cannibalistic
Now my challenge to the forum members is to design a system that will maximise their production
any ideas? The best system design will win great kudos from other yabbie breeders perhaps EB could be the judge and donate expensive and costly prizes?

Make it cheap and trashy prizes and I'm in.......

Hell - how can I resist a chance at that ? I'm in !

Actually speaking of cheap and trashy prizes......

We were having a competition a long time ago about about the best design converting a rubbish bin into an AP system, I think Johnnie7au was the main instigator at the time.

We still have the trophy here for the winner of that, but I'm not sure what happened with it all... Might need to go and try to dig up the old thread..

Thanks EB
Cheap and trashy is good
Hopefully great ideas will come flowing in
I especially like the concept of not thinking too much but simply utilising other peoples great ideas!!!
Hang on doesn't that happen to most of us?
Being a newbie where should we start posting ideas

all you have to do is look at thier scientific name Cherax Destructor.


Ok too offer you best stocking ideas and densities can you let us know the depth of where you currently stock them? how many tanks you have for them? do you mind spending a little money say less than $200? flow rates through the system and current avg water readings to ensure we dont overstock past your grow beds capacity

I won't claim this idea as mine . I have played with it on a small scale and it seemed to work. I had 50 3lt milk bottles all connected togeather set up with 1 yabbie in each only prob I had was plastic milk bottles don't like the UV and breakdown with in a year. Goodluck and I look forward to.see whatother people are doing

How do you tell the boy yabbies from the girl yabbies?

Consult below pics Abdul... (not great pics)

Female...


Male...

I have a system that has worked well for me since march. still a couple lost to canabilism but the system can scale up to fit about 300 yabbies in a square metre of tank floor. I would want to wait until the growing season is over before making any claims about its performance tho.

I was at the local fish farm last week and I was asking about yabbies, he was telling me that they have 4 tanks, they separate the males and females into 2, to let them grow,they select breeders to another, then the juviniles in the other and so on to be cycled apparently when the berry's hatch they can do up to 200 at a time and the hungry little buggers eat the adults. if you leave them all in the same tank you will find it harder to get them to a larger size, Hope this helps, I'm not the expert here, just relaying what I have learnt by someone elses experience. would love to see some awesome set ups. And learn more from this thread, The only time I get yabbies at the moment is when I visit my uncles farm. YYuuumm!

Yep... female in berry...

When I picked up some yabbies yesterday I noticed a large tank with hundreds of large yabbies. The water level was kept low but the o2 that was going into the water made it hard for the yabbies to see each other. Not sure if this is a way to keep them from killing each other.

Would love to be able to grow yabbies but dunno how to house them

I think you may find the adults will eat the babies (going from past experience)