Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi,

I have a BYAP growbed as a yabby tank that I have had going since mid Feb and have 7 larger yabbies and 7 smaller yabbies in it. ( pictures below) The smaller yabbies are babies from earlier in the year. I cleaned out and moved the yabby tank last weekend as it had become quite green and murky over the winter after the duckweed on the top and kang kong in floating basket died when it got cold. When cleaning the tank I noticed that 2 of the yabbies are berried.
Should I move these 2 from the main yabby tank to a smaller fish tank until the babies drop off and then add the babies to the main tank when they get a bit bigger or just leave them be in the main tank ?

I have a few onion bags in the tank as well as a few bricks and a plant for the smaller yabbies to hide and plenty of pipe for the bigger yabbies.

Your advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Hi Paul, That must be very exciting.
I would think that the onion bags should work well as the young leave mum and hide in there. We cleaned out our underbed yabby tanks and one of the beds had 100 little ones, that was last summer. At a recent workshop we fished out one that had been bred and it was in berry. So in answer to your questions I would suggest plenty of pipes and a couple or few onion bags. We also put one in berry in to a small desktop aquarium and watched things develop, I think we lost most of them as they seemed to disappear because there was nowhere to hide.

Thanks Faye.

I have a full IBC cut in half and joined as my sump, and in the side with out the pump I keep yabbies. I noticed one this morning was in berry. I put some filter sponge in the tank for somewhere for the babies to hide. What is the process from here. Is it eggs stay under tail till they hatch then the babys need to find somewhere to hide before they get eaten or do the females find somewhere safe and then lay the eggs?

Hi bndybear - hope I can help. You were right with the first one. The eggs hatch on her and for a short while, the babies stay there too until big enough then they detach and swim away.

I like the onion bag idea... might try that in our nursery tanks (ie: the tanks with berried females only) ATM we have nearly two dozen split into two tanks and have been experimenting with ideas on how to self separate the mums from the babies when they are ready to leave. We are currently trying PVC pipes with heaps of slits cut in them and mesh end caps so that the babies can swim out through the slits leaving mum behind who is then easy to retrieve (Hubby's idea )... will have to wait and see how successful it is... in theory its a great idea, but feeding is a bit labour intensive... might be an easier option to use heaps of onion bags for the babies instead...

If you have the option to separate them I would. The mother will not protect them in any way shape or form, they are on their own from day one.

Obviously the more hides the better but the reality is they have a very long hard road ahead.

In dams they burrow and can stay out of harms way, you cant replicate this in a hard tank so they can only hide where they fit, as time goes on their options become more and more limited. Their speed and size when smaller is what determines survival.

If you do keep them all together, feed well and good luck