The Puffer Forum

I finally got myself the self-reproducing crayfish, a Marmokreb, at the cichlid swap. For $10, I can get a single creature that clones itself. Free puffer food! According to the seller, she's be perfectly safe with my prized, expensive Chinese goldfish & their tank mates--fancy snails & fancy cories. 10 minutes after adding the cray, I see her munching on a brand new striped snail. She's literally trying to break through it's shell! About 1/2 hour later, I see one of my long-finned cories missing a tail. just had a red nub left. i suspect the cay for that. So off with those big claws. I always feel awfully cruel doing that but I had no choice. It didn't seem she felt any pain from it though. I think the tank's inhabitants are pretty safe from her now.

I had/bred them for many years. They are not safe with anything including their own kind in dense populations as well as most plants. And they are escape artists. But they do breed very well and provided you have a large tank can make up a valuable food source for puffers (or if you have a very large tank or basin for yourself). We also had some threads on them here.

By the way: it's Marmorkrebs, if you want the German term. Seems some letters were lost. Or call them Marbled Crayfish.

After a water change expect babies! LOL

Doesn't surprise me, a crayfish is a crayfish is a crayfish. I wouldn't trust any sort of crustacean short of shrimp in my tanks. Crabs/crayfish are advantageous feeders by nature, if its dead enough or slow enough, it's a very viable food source. The cloning of marble crays is interesting, and I wonder how this method of reproduction will work out as a food source for puffers.

She should be fine in there with just little claws, right?

Ive only had them in the tank by themselves . Let it clone once and send to its death. You should end up with 15-50 new crays , soon. I never let them reach maturity. Once they got a decent size they met Petey!

How will it feed itself with no claws?

Arny wrote:How will it feed itself with no claws?

it has lil tiny hand claws that can do way more efficient damage. just not a large chomp at a time

I'm with the "never trust any cray" group. I still keep one shrimp species that I don't trust with anything fancy.

Yeah, I'm considering housing this fella with my miurus. He is about the same size as the cray. He'll have a good time chomping on the babies, before he eventually eats the Mom.