I've gone through more crawdads than I can count...
They are a great clean up crew for a messy tank, they eat anything, dead plants, live plants, dead fish, live fish, any prepared foods, any fish deficate (yes, even that!). The ones that survived the longest seemed to prefer the shrimp pellets I feed my bristlenoses.
Be forewarned - if there is any way to escape the tank they will. They climb plants, cords, anything. If they do get out they always seem to make it to the one spot far away from the tank that you don't think of checking and then die.
They are an awesome live food source. No invertabrate to vertabrate parasites to worry about, high in color producing agents, and the ones that live for a while eat the dead pieces! Out of at least fifty these past two months I'm down to four I think.
This one was the biggest I've ever caught...each claw was about 3" and "it" (on a side note, anyone know how to breed these guys?) was 7" long. Didn't even fit in my hand. He lasted two months until he got caught out of his log one morning. The oscars only ate "its" tail, as it was all they could fit in their mouths
a crayfish I had caught in an Ontario lake. The fish thought they would make a tasty snack of the crustaceon but the 4" crayfish had other plans. He took a few aggressive pinches at the predators snout while advancing, not retreating, and proceeded to find a small rock cleft to make a home in. I asked about him a couple of months later, and it turns out he was more or less a permanent resident.
