Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I've heard a few times that bird mesh is a bit of a standard used by many.. Shadecloth might be easiest though, coz I only need a small offcut

use what you already have, don't go shopping for more stuff if you don't have to

Marron Mesh is like a small version of bird netting, the squares are approx 1cm by 1cm though. Most Marron farmers use it to make up their hides as its much cheaper than shadecloth. These guys use huge quantities of the stuff as each hide usually consists of 7m (off a 1m roll) of it and they usually put in around 200 hides per pond. I think for babies to hide in you can beat the shadecloth though.

T'man, not sure if I understand you, do you mean that shadecloth is good to use for baby redclaw/marron/yabbies?

Yeah good for the baby crustaceans to hide in, keeps em out of reach of their hungry parents.

Hi folks - First post so I thought it may as well be useful.

Really any mesh will do the job, even those porcelain tubes used for biomedia do the trick. Very true that many of the crayfish farmers have stopped using things like onion bags for crayfish hides. This is purely because they break down far too fast. However there are some still using it because it is inexpensive and simple to replace. As you can see below.

Thinking about you guys and girls tackling Aquaponics, if your plants are in with the crayfish then they will act as hides for the juviniles. Not to mention they have a great ability to hide themselves in gravel.

But at the end of the day if you plan to use onion bags like pictured below, then be sure to weigh them down.

Until next time, take care.

Cool, thanks for that Crusty...

With my Yabbies I have lots of gravel, some onion bags, pots of vallis, plus a heap of small sections of 12mm garden hose so if they can't manage to find somewhere to hide they probably deserve to be eaten

I just (briefly) checked out your forum link from the pics Crusty, some really cool stuff there. I will have to check it out further...

Thanks Simmo, as with any forum we are always building it lol....

Same here Crusty, have bookmarked the forum for a future read and welcome to this forum

I just got some babies too! They are in a small aquarium with their mum.

Should I remove mum and put her with her mates in another tank?

Congrats, Dad!

J7 I'm pretty sure thats the way to do it, I have four berried girls in a nice 4 foot aquarium, expecting them to hatch soon.

I think the hatchlings are likely to be eaten by the adults, and separating the berried girls means less stress for them. Put a towel over the tank to keep it dark and wait until they hatch.

As soon as the young do hatch and are exploring away from mum, you can put her back with the rest of the yabbies. I'm not sure how soon they can mate again, but apparently their breeding season goes until April in the right climate.

simmo, i think thewy get right back on it as long as the temp is right.

24C rings a bell

here you go;



so, raise to 15C to breed. 24C give 3 week turnaround.

Man i gotta get some more.......................anyone know of a good place in the north west of melb?