The Puffer Forum

Mine Just berried again ! really cool.

I would feel pretty safe keeping the marbled crays myself, as our waste water is strictly local on my own property, and they is no open or running water nearby. But I would worry about sharing the offspring.

I originally bought a normal cray and on a high protein diet it turned blue.


this guy was the clean up crew in our piranha tank for a few months when he changed colors... Anyone else ever experience this? Looked really cool

Another keeper I know has his turn a slight blue also and he attributes it to a high protein diet.

Mine seen to go blue after they molt and then gradually turn brown.

Half mine have turned Blue

One of mine is finally berried!!

OMG OMG!!! It is about time!

Mine are blue for a couple days after they shed and then turn back to their normal brown color.

I find that they do change from blue to brown and back to blue.. then brown again...

After a molt they are certainly blue..

I caught one guy on another forum selling "electric blue crays" that were actually marbled crays. BOO!! I am glad I called him out on that... The blue cray pic was totally different than the offspring pic which were marbled.

Thats awesome JP. I just found a whole ton of babies in my tank. Right now I either have babies or big adults nothing in the middle to feed my middle puffer lol

Was he just misinformed or was he outright lying?

I don't know... but he was charging

"Adults are $25
babies are $15 for each"

CRAZY!!

Maybe he was mislead in the first place...

Ive got more babies then I know what to do with . Petey is loving the little crunchy meals!

i think its weird to keep crays. i literally watch 10 scatter every step when walking through the river behind my house. brown ones and red ones. they get quite large too. i fed them to my giant water bug. but dont want to risk the disease with my puffers.....

DrKen thats why we raise our own, we know what they have eatten and that they are safe to feed



Pics of the giant water bug

Well, we found our first baby yesterday. Oddly the purchase date was Dec 20 2010. Given that they were probably a couple weeks old at that point, we are looking at 1 year to the day before we had any offspring.

Talk about late bloomers. Pics will follow in the next couple days.

For RTR:

Apparently these are not the only known species:
http://www.crayfishworld.com/image2003/Nature.pdf

and there have apparently been vertebrates (fish) and reptiles with similar traits. These crays just apparently are a little quicker to the gun (except in my case). According to the article there are at least 3 other species of crays that will self reproduce without the aid of the male. Dr. Ron Shimek believes that possibly because I have 2 one will portray male characteristics while one female. This is possible, but some how both are berried at nearly the same time (possibly one for the 2nd time). Adolescent adventure

In the lab independent results have shown that one (marbled cray) can clone ones self. I can't say for sure if that was this case or the case of others where more than one cray was actually in the tank.

I will be giving a co-worker's daughter my old breeder set up where she will get one cray per tank and she has to study the size and growth rates over the next year until they produce their own offspring. Once that happen, I am hoping, they will be transferred from the local high school to the university for further study.

This image back drop is in Inches:



This image backdrop is in CM:



Mean little bugger: