Blue Lobster female with eggs - no male

[imagirlgeek]

Posted at Dallasfishbox over the weekend, but hopefully someone here can give us some info?

We thought our blue lobster was sick, because well, first of all we didn't know it was a female, and she was hiding and not really eating.  But tonight noticed that she's holding  a bunch of eggs, and I mean a BUNCH of eggs.  Anyone know what's gonna happen when they don't get fertilized?  I've read that they hold onto eggs/babies for up to 4 weeks and don't eat much during that time.  I'm worried she'll fast for nothing.  Should we just leave her alone?

Raul suggested that Spot86t might have some insight on this, but I'll take advice or experience or info from anyone!

[Spot86t]

Re: Blue Lobster female with eggs - no male

The eggs have already been fetilized.  The male passes her a "sperm packet" (for lack of a better term", and when she's ready (could be a good while), she'll "berry" and use the packet to fertilze them.  Give her about a month and you'll have anywhere from 150-400 baby blues.  Now's about the time you wish you'd gotten one of those kiddie pools from walmart when they were only $6  :).  For a few weeks, mom will tolerate the little guys crawling all around and all over her.  After a while though, she may not be so tolerant, and may uhm, consume them...   They will also start to consume each other.  My last female produced 372 babies, gathered over a week's time and placed in their own tank.  I'm sure the number is somewhere in the 225-250 range now (approx a month later) - there's a good bit of sibling rivalry that goes on over territories.  

They will gobble anachris which is about the cheapest thing you can feed them.  You can get gobs of it on aquabid or maybe ebay rather cheaply, feed them some of it, and put the rest in an outdoor pond/bucket/tote with some water from your regular water changes.

[imagirlgeek]

Re: Blue Lobster female with eggs - no male

OMG!!!  Well, my husband just had a stroke and is lying on the living room floor, however, somehow he manages to get the words out that our lobster is a hussy!  

Okay, so seriously, we should probably get her moved into her own space?  I can imagine it's going to be a nightmare catching hundreds of baby blues.  Wow...I'm still a little in shock!  Thank you for the info...I was thinking they would all just kind of go bad.  Wow.  Okay.

If you think of anything else, we are very open to information.  There is not so much online that I could find.  

Thank you!!

[Spot86t]

Re: Blue Lobster female with eggs - no male

Yeah, one would think it would be easy to catch the little buggers.  You'll see what I mean.  When my last momma was berried, I put her and her cave in a 5.5 gallon tank, with sponge filter.  Berried, they usually stay in hiding during daylight hours.  With all those babies roaming around, crawling everywhere, one would think one swoop of the net would catch 20 or so.  HaH!

baby cray caves can be made by taking a handful of plastic drinking straws and tying a tight knot with some nylon string about an inch and a half from the end of the straws.  Now cut it off about an inch and half from the knot, and repeat.  You'll end up with about 3 "sea urchins" made of straws.  The babies will fit in those until they are a month old or so with average straws.  If you can find some of those large diameter ones, they'll fit a bit longer.

So now you have the perfect excuse to go get a 400 gallon tank.  Remember, with crays, it's surface area that's important, not height.  

Notes:  Make sure you add abotu a tablespoon of aquarium salt and about 2 drops of iodine for every 10 gallons.  This helps them molt by aiding with the detatchment of old versus new shell.  You should maintain this their entire life - when they get older, molts are infrequent, and often problematic.

[imagirlgeek]

Re: Blue Lobster female with eggs - no male

Okay, we'll get her moved this week and make sure she keeps her cave.  The straw idea is brilliant!  That's also doable...we always keep straws around here.  I didn't know about the iodine, but do the aquarium salt as a regular part of our maintenance.  She's molted twice since we've had her and that's what we thought was going on at first since she usually got pretty reclusive during those times.  But when she wasn't getting better, my husband told me to get online and see what I could find on crayfish illnesses.  That's when I got the flashlight and checked to see if I could find any physical clues.  There was a pretty big one....a ton of eggs!  I'll get some iodine and start doing that to make things easier as well.  Okay, looks like we've got a new project...unexpected for sure, but pretty exciting!  

I just told my husband that we needed a 400 gallon aquarium...he just laughed.  

[dblondfemme]

Re: Blue Lobster female with eggs - no male

*raising my hand*
do you think one or two of these would work cleaning up my feeder tank?  :?

[imagirlgeek]

Re: Blue Lobster female with eggs - no male

When she was in my 100, the tank was immaculate!  Since we moved her into the 210, I have to syphon all the garbage off the bottom.  We had to move her so we could medicate and it wasn't safe for her.  They do clean amazingly!  And if you can hold out, we'll give you some to try out when they come.  :-)

[Spot86t]

Re: Blue Lobster female with eggs - no male

You can get the iodine in the marine section of most fish shops.  

A cheap cave is a 1" PVC T.   They seem to prefer T's over Elbows - more exits perhaps?  Every time I went to Lowes or Home Depot, I'd pick up one or more contractor pack of T's.  That's 5 T's, and it's what my cray pond was filled with.  They really liked it.  Unfortunately so did Mr. Racoon who made short work of emptying them into his mouth  :(.  Coon was caught and hauled far, far, far away.  Over 120 adult crays gone in one night.  Due to the season, the rest of them, plus my breeders are indoors now.

I wonder how many I can keep in the bathtub?  I've got 2 berried females now, and running out of tank space for them.....

[imagirlgeek]

Re: Blue Lobster female with eggs - no male

Good, because I have an entire bin full of PVC that I got from the CEO of a company I used to work for.  He heard I was into fish and ended up offering me all the extra rock and pvc left over from when he built his house.  I'll have to see how many T's I've got.  You need any PVC?  LOL  Right now she's got a nice little nook under some slate where other fish can't get.  Hmmm...the bathtub is not a bad idea.  :-)  I had no idea raccoons ate crays!  What about possum?  I've only ever seen possum around here.  Do your attempt to escape during the breeding period?  She actually climbed out of the tank last week and fortunately we found her pretty quick.  

I was gonna ask...what do you do with all of them???

[rrocket2002]

Re: Blue Lobster female with eggs - no male

Crawfish Festival...

[Spot86t]

Re: Blue Lobster female with eggs - no male

Ok Raul,

How bout we start with the pair you've got....  :P

[rrocket2002]

Re: Blue Lobster female with eggs - no male



That response took alot longer than I thought it would.

[spyke1969]

Re: Blue Lobster female with eggs - no male

I have been wanting some, so I say offer them to your fellow fishboxers!!!!

[imagirlgeek]

Re: Blue Lobster female with eggs - no male

If all goes well, it'll be an open house for blue lobsters!!     Seriously.   8O

[rrocket2002]

Re: Blue Lobster female with eggs - no male

Does open mean Free?

I'd be interested in some little guys if you gonna make a nice package deal.