Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Don't get too excited BD, they will climb out of almost anything, I have my hoses etc going through the side of tank, I would put a shade cloth hide in tank for the babies to hide, the two males you have together will probably fight to the death and you may have sweet yabbie meat by xmas 2011 unless you plan on eating the six big ones you now have, Neil from Aqua Blue always sends extra's to allow for deaths, but you would have been better of going to a fish market and buying a couple of kilo's of live ones as they are reasonably cheap and you would have paid about the same as you did for postage or going for a country drive and catching some yourself, I use yabbies in tank mainly to clean up the bottom and eat uneaten food, I regularly put fresh ones in tank when we go out and catch a feed, I have a them in a 3000lt tank and at times up to 200, but they will eat each other and fight no matter how much you feed them, don't want to deflate you just explaining the facts, I have had them for a few years off and on, most will probably agree with the above, any fish you have will feed on the babies, even gold fish.
There is a thread about blue yabbies and even a photo competition, they turn blue in fresher water and you will find when they shed skin next time they will be even bluer, all of mine come from dams and are a creamy brown colour eventually turn blue, picture below shows a few stages of colour change


This thread you will see a few more pics from members viewtopic.php?f=25&t=6844&start=0 and somewhere else is a whole thread on yabbies etc, the babies will take about 18 months to get to size and you will loose heaps to fighting, they need plenty of room and are extremely territorial, the main reason for fighting

Thank you, Nocky...

Being a fond fish lover, I was pretty upset at myself for losing my first female this morning. Must have been too stressful for the girl. But loses are expected and the water quality is good so can only do so much. All yabbies are currently separated while finalising my 2m x 3m pond setup. This little pond will be the start of many experimental ones to come. What am I experimenting, not sure yet. I have not even tasted yabbies yet...haha.

The ones I have are the brood stock, I have built a little setup which I was post tomorrow where I have a tank for each one (55lt). I have a separate tub where I'll put the 2 to 4 air wall stones (20") so that the water has plenty of oxygen. Question, can you have too much air? This air pump, pumps out 800L/hr of air, way too much for this set up I guess let say approx 300 L of water in total for the 7 tubs.

I don't think you can have to much air, but probably over kill what you have, the death is normal and as mentioned is why Aqua Blue give extra's, 300lts of water isn't enough to keep a lot of yabbies, as I said they are territorial and will fight for it, make sure you have plenty of hides, 40mm pvc around 8" long is suitable and weigh tube down with a brick or I use roofing tiles, experiment away is the only way to learn, I am always trying different things some work but most fail, but who cares it is a hobby and an enjoyable one

You are correct, 300L is not a lot if kept together but if in separate 55 lt tubs (photo tomorrow) with one in each is more than enough. Remember these ones only purpose in life is to help breed for the future christmas dinners

Once the females eggs have been fertilised (in this case they were before receiving them) they will stay in their separate containers till the babies come off mummy and start wandering in search of food. This is where I will move them to the bigger tank. Now, I have sitting around a pond liner 3m x 4m. Any suggestions on the dimensions I should work towards specifically for yabbies.

I was planning, 100mm for the top lip (fold over), 400mm sides, 1000mm bottom (see professional CAD drawing)
I need to know is 300mm water height enough. I realise, more water lesser temperature varies in on hot days. Hence shade cloth to do three things, stop escapees, protection from predators and shade cover.

Back to the little make shift hatchery. I am a little worry of water movement, how well do baby yabbies handle water flow. I would for starters put fly wire or something and elastic bands on both the outlet and inlets to stop losses. I am assuming for the first few weeks these things will be so small that I would have to have very slow water movement with outlet up high. Any advice to all these questions

water flow is alright, I have a 12,000lph pump and they keep away, not sure 300mm of water is enough, yabbies in the wild will bury in the mud if it gets hot, obviously they can't do that in tank so they may cook especially if they are shedding shell, in the first year they can shed 20 times or more, your plan will stop them escaping, but fly wire will soon clog with crap and algae so you will burn out pump so in my opinion not a good idea, the best for baby yabbies is scrunched up shade cloth or similar (all the crap in my thread and not a pic of that ) they like to hide in that and live off the algae that grows on it, in the end you will still have about 400 baby's and enough room for about 100 or so of which you will be lucky if 20 survive, I have only eaten a couple of yabbies from the system and put more in regularly, have to clean tank today as many yabbie limbs on the bottom, it is the nature of the beast they fight and eat each other no matter how much you feed them, for your hobby/experiment you would be better trying WA Marron or whatever the crow eater equivalent is, I think in east maybe red claw, but marron hardly aggressive still don't like crowding and are much better than yabbies to eat but take twice as long to grow, about 3 years, but stick with what you are doing but be ready for carnage and deaths but you get to see how the underwater world live

If you have some shade or locate your tank in a fairly shady area, 300mm of water will be sufficient... my yabbie tank is the tank below the growbed. I have since remove the pots, etc that yabbies can grap onto to escape... this tank does not have any filtration, just air and duckweed... with some 10cm+ adults, a number of 3cm, 2cm, and so on... they have bred in the tank... it is now filled with lots of gunk but the yabbies are still surviving... in fact, I believe they live off gunk in nature...

It sounds like you are really keen on raising the youngs and yes when the baby yabbies just start leaving the mum, they are really small and fragile... gets blown about easily with aeration and water flow... which is why I suggested earlier in the post on using the simple undergravel filter... or a sponge filter... No active suction or water flow. Just bubbles at the water surface which provides aeration... It is a typical setup from breeding tropical fishes... they do not need any fancy filtration... I have about 50 odd 8mm to 1cm I think (lost count) in a 30L tank at the moment with undergravel filter... they are definitely growing... either by eating food or each other... The main idea is to give the fittest a fighting chance before introducing them back to the tank with 10cm+ adults..

If you still wish to have the filtration with heaps of water flow and suction, I would suggest you buy breeding traps/tanks. You can get them at the local fish shop. Used mainly for raising tropical fish babies... they will then be contained inside the tank and the water flow will be somewhat disperse when it passes the tank... and they will not be sucked into the filtration inlet...

Nocky - You mention you have a 3000L tank holding up to 200 yabbies, what dimensions is this tank?

Well early this morning I gave up sleeping (4am) to finish my mini hatchery I guess you could call it. I have three separate tanks. From the back top (which is not shown) will come the water from the filter and at the front is the outlets which will go back down to a sump tank (for now, pipe facing up).

I have forgone the idea of filtered water flow for now and just have long air walls going for the two females. I guess when the babies are big enough to go with the general population, these can turn into quarantine tanks for the fish when I get those started.

At 64 watts (4W for Airpump, 2 x 30W heaters) it works out nicely to run off my solar panel/battery setup that is collecting dust.

OK, so maybe yabbies for Christmas 2011 is more realistic then

I didn't realise that I snapped up a photo of a female berried, as I weighted them this morning the eggs were very dark in colour. This photo was taken 2 days ago. They must be very close to hatching. Better get online and start listing maybe 200 baby names for the kids

BD, Nocky's 3,000L tank is just a standard aquaculture tub, so roughly 800mm high and about 2200mm diamter.

I notice in the photo of your tubs, that on the shelf in the back you have a bottle of water treatment for the removal of chlorine (the tall thin one with the red and blue label). Most of these treatments contain sodium thiosulphate which is toxic to us humans - it's not something you want to use with fish/shellfish that you are intending to eat.

Nice spot, I figured that...that bottle was suppose to go inside for the missus. I realise the effort that is required for water quality. I have used rain water for this setup and will use for all projects but once again....thank you for the warning.

BD they are over 3mt in diameter and about 900 high, I have 2 joined but only put yabbies in 1
pic before they went in

Whoops - kinda close !

Just used this pool calculator http://www.directpoolsupplies.com.au/webcontent54.htm and chilli is right.................again, seemed bigger i'm not a mathematician just a humble desk jokey

Didn't go as complex as using maths - just looked at the BYAP site and saw the dimensions of the ones Joel sells !

Hmm.. if you are foregoing filtration on the account of what I said, I should probably clarify myself. You will get away without bio-filtration if you have yabbies in a biggish tank (my tank is about 500L). Yabbies will still produce ammonia and hence you need to grow some duckweed or algae (baby yabbies feed on algae) to use up the ammonia to reduce the ammonia build-up. I am quite sure that in my yabbie tank, the survival rate of each batch of young is very low, hence it is not highly stocked.

From your setup, it looks like that tanks are not very big. Each berried female will probably produce enough youngs to fill the 3 tanks. I believe with your setup and the amount of youngs you are going to store in there (going with maximum survival rate if possible), you will need bio-filtration (ammonia to nitrite to nitrate conversion). I lost half a batch of baby yabbies storing them in a container similar to yours with only air going in there... The tank water with the dead yabbies smelt strongly of ammonia. The other half I placed them into another similar container with a powerhead filter and a breeding trap, I believe all of them survive.. too many to count...

Just thought that I should let you know before you run into problems...

Why do you need heater??

yes i didn't see heaters, yabbies don't like it hot, as mentioned earlier in the wild they bury into the mud to keep cool, using heaters you will cook them before xmas