Crayfish/Crawfish?

[willy:-)]

Can you guys describe the setups your crayfish are in and their tankmates please. I have never heard of them being kept sucsessfully with fish and maybe I should get one and set up a tank around his needs if they are all that great All I have is fish I need some more variety!!

 

[RockabillyChick]

If you think a length of 5 inches is large, look to Astacopsis gouldi, the giant Tasmanian crayfish (and the largest freshwater invertebrate in the world):

A. gouldi held by a man.

"Giant Freshwater Lobster".

i've seen lobsters bigger than that. there was like a 23 pound lobster that came in a shipment to a resturant. the staff collected money and bought him so that he wouldnt get eaten and donated him to an aquarium. they felt that he'd been around long enough to get that huge, it would be a crime to cook him.

 

[Roan Art]

Lobster setup:

Ours is a Hammer's Cobalt Blue which is Procambarus sp.

August
20 gallon tank with gravel substrate, fake plants, bogwood
- 2 tiger barbs and 2 silver dollars. The dollars were about quarter sized. Tigers medium
- added another silver dollar a few weeks later, nickle sized

September
Beginning Sept. added 1 Candy Striped Pleco and the lobster
Removed fake plants and added real plants, large leaved dark green ones

October
Added 1 black Mystery Snail

Yes, the tank is WAY too small now. I didn't know how big the dollars got until beginning of Oct. The silver dollars are 3" each easy. It is VERY crowded and I have to change the water twice a week to keep it in control.

The lobster moulted 4 times since September and the last time was just last week. That's a lot so he MUST be doing well. He gets calcium by eating his own moult. YUM!

The dollars eat veggie flakes, romaine lettuce and spinach. The barbs eat that + F/D bloodworms, daphnia, tubifex and brine shrimp.

The lobster and pleco eat algae wafers, zucchini, parsnips, romaine lettuce, spinach, and carnivore food sticks that I stick in the zucchini and parsnips.

They are all being moved to a 36 gallon in a few more weeks, then to a 55g in a few more months.

Roan

 

[graphicdesign_r]

My cray is native, but he grew up in the tank from about 1" long. I believe the reason he is successful with the smaller fish is because they were too big for him to hunt/eat them when first introduced, and therefore never viewed them as food.

Tank Setup: Gravel substrate, with live plants (right now anachris, green sedge, and some weird plant with a woody bulb on the bottom and arrow shaped leaves I inherited from my ex).

I have two semi-large pieces of driftwood in there which supports a decent snail population and the snails make up a large part of his diet (adds calcium, I've seen him eating the old snail shells too).

Ghost Shrimp (as an occasional treat) are also fed to him. I put 6 in over two months ago, and my iridescent, the cray, and my red clawed crab all eat them. I vacuumed my tank yesterday and actually found one of them still alive. Hardy little thing, must have found a good hiding spot...

He also eats algae wafers meant for my pleco (and he runs and hides them under his rock... very strange), and any flake food that falls in front of him.

I don't think they are picky (scavengers after all), but there's horror stories and here's one:

I went fishing one day, and had no luck (keep in mind this is before I had a "pet" cray... I don't use them anymore...). So I kept the live bait left over in a bucket with an air pump hooked to it. There was 3 crayfish in there and about 11 medium shiners. The next moring when I went fishing I found 3 live crays and 11 dead shiners, ALL sliced through at the same point, just behind the gills. KEEP that in mind when adding something that unpredictable to your tank... Not something you want to add to a tank with slow, bottom dwelling fish...