I have heard of soap wrapped in eucalyptus leaves being a very good bait for yabbies. Obviously it would be the cheap non fragrant type of soap. They are also very good climbers and I have also heard of people getting up in the morning only to find their yabbies walking down the hallway. Dont know how true that is but if in a pond they would have to be contained somehow I would have thought?

Edited May 14, 201511 yr by Callan

Yeah I had 4 in a tank and 2 got out, even though it had a lid, other two got stuck into each other and ended up going to heaven, poor little buggers, ha.

I have always wanted to get a blue marron for a pet :( one of the pet shops in sydney had them for sale at one stage

Haven't been around lately, so late to reply, but thought I'd add my experience

I've kept yabbies in my tank with Red Cherry Shrimp for a few years without any issues. The yabby is way too slow to catch them and the shrimp will just go about their lives as usual. My blue clawed yabbies survived through winter in the garage without a heater, but definitely thrived with one. 

I've kept multiple Yabbies in a tank together, but you will need multiple hiding spots/caves for them all as they can become territorial and kill each other. They love to climb and redecorate the tank, so you'll need to keep a tight lid on top, and expect to have plants uprooted if you have any. My first yabby ended up climbing out of his tank and drying out before I found him. 

I've currently got a plastic net over my tank, weighed down all over the edges using fishing line and sinkers, which seems to be doing an okay job (saves me the hassle of sticky-taping it down and removing when i want to clean)

As for fish, the yabbies will definitely have a go at them! 

I've kept a community tank with a crab, with guppies, Red cherry shrimp, a bristle nose pleco, tetras, corydoras and kuhli loach and never had any real issues - crab tried grabbing them a few times, but ended up being too slow and getting bored of them. But I've also tried yabbies with an algae eater and that didn't end up going well at all, but the guppies did fine, mainly being top dwellers, they're out of the yabbies reach mostly. 

As to finding yabbies, some fishing stores also stock yabbies as live bait, but you'll just have to check how healthy they are, and if they have all limbs (although they will grow back). My local stores sold me a dozen for $8 :-)