How to Tell Good Crawfish Fry from Bad? A Guide to Selecting High-Quality Fry

Once all the measures in the pond are in place, it is time to start preparing to stock the crawfish. The quality of the crawfish fry is the key factor in crawfish yield. So what kind of fry are high-quality fry? Next, let us take a look together at the traits of high-quality fry, so that everyone can tell apart the difference between high-quality fry and non-high-quality fry.

1. Look at the color

In the early stage, good fry are best all blue-shelled crawfish, with as few red ones as possible. Good crawfish fry have bright, glossy body color, and the pigmentation of the group is the same, so they all look about the same. Poor crawfish fry often have dull body color and differences in pigmentation within the group. The faster the crawfish grow, the more the three factors of temperature, energy and calcium meet the conditions for growth, and the crawfish will carry out rapid molting and growth.

2. Look at the region

For crawfish self-bred and self-raised in the local area, after several generations of breeding, the problems that easily arise are the two disadvantages of parental degeneration and a high incidence of inherited disease. So, if possible, it is best to combine local and non-local fry, and at the same time this can also reduce the risk of disease in the fry. As the saying goes, do not put all your eggs in one basket, which is to hopefully lower the probability of a disease outbreak somewhat.

3. Look at the shell

During the fry stage, soft-shelled fry are fairly common, and the survival rate of such fry is generally not high. It is best to choose hard-shelled fry, which indicates that the fry had fairly rich nutrition in the original pond and have good growth vitality, and the survival rate after being put into the pond is relatively high.

4. Look at the size uniformity of the group

Good fry are uniform in size, strong in body, smooth in body surface without mud, clean on the underside, swim actively and react quickly; poor-quality fry are uneven in size, on the thin side, some with mud stuck to their bodies, and those with size differences may possibly be fry from different batches mixed together. Try to buy somewhat larger ones for a slightly higher survival rate. If you buy ones of uneven size, when food is insufficient the larger ones will attack the smaller fry.

5. Look at the gills

Do not choose ones with blackened gill filaments, empty-shelled crawfish, or overly old large crawfish.

6. Look at the intestine and liver

The intestine and liver of high-quality fry should both be fairly good. The intestine should not show conditions such as broken segments, uneven thickness, emptiness, or loose droppings, and the closer the liver is to golden yellow, the better.

7. Price

Wild crawfish fry are cheap and small in size, but wild crawfish fry are often undernourished and weak in constitution, and the size they grow to is also smaller than that of freshwater crawfish, becoming small hard crawfish that cannot grow large enough in the later stage. The survival rate is relatively low.

8. Transportation time

Transportation time - this topic is actually not quite appropriate to put here, because transportation time actually has little to do with high-quality fry; it is because transportation time affects the survival rate of high-quality fry. So, I hope everyone can shorten the transportation time of the fry as much as possible. A fairly suitable time is within 2 hours, and the longest should preferably not exceed 4 hours. The longer the transportation time, the worse the dehydration problem of the crawfish fry, and the worse the stress reaction after being put into the pond.