Australian Redclaw crayfish. Pic: Supplied

A MYANMAR ornamental fish exporter announced that he successfully bred the Australian native Redclaw freshwater crayfish last month.

U Tin Win, the managing director of Hein Aquarium in North Dagon township in Yangon, said he is confident that the crustacean will prove a commercial success, whether on dinner plates or in aquariums.

“We’re confident that we can breed the Redclaw for commercial production and that they will be popular and well established in Myanmar in the near future,” he said.

U Tin Win said Redclaw – whose scientific name is Cherax quadricarinatus – is native to Queensland and the Northern Territory, Australia, while a number of countries in the Middle East and Asia, especially Indonesia, have successfully established Redclaw aquaculture.

The Redclaw crayfish are cerulean blue in colour and some have the distinctive red claws that give the species its name. Adults reach a maximum length of 14 centimetres or about 6 inches, meaning they are better to look at than eat.

He said that the Department of Fisheries, under the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries, and the Myanmar Fish Federation had provided invaluable assistance in importing the first batch of Redclaw. He added that this is the first time a local company has successfully bred them without external technological support.

However, while he was glad to have received the department’s assistance, U Tin Win said the idea to try breeding the distinctive Redclaw was entirely his own, although he used the internet to investigate the species first.

“When I explored the prospect of breeding Redclaw using the internet, I found that they were ideally suited to the weather of our country and decided to try and import some. “By the time the first batch of adults arrived I had studied all the possible technology for commercial breeding of the crayfish on the internet,” he said.

He said that first breeding batch of 56 adults had been imported from Australia via Singapore in April.

U Tin Win said aquarium staff then picked the healthiest 17 males and 28 females and bred them. He added that the survival rate for juveniles bred at the aquarium was a healthy 80 percent for those crayfish weighing 2 to 3 grams.
The company is cooperating with the Department of Fisheries to run an experimental research program to investigate whether or not they can be bred commercially.

Redclaw crayfish have a number of commercial advantages, such as rapid reproduction rates and high growth rates that make them ideal candidates for extensive breeding, he said.