Crayfish Tank Ideas

[powellmacaque]

I currently have three Peninsula Crayfish (native to North/Central Florida and South Georgia) in a 20 gallon tank. I know this is pretty crowded for crayfish, but it kind of happened by accident. I bought one $0.99 "feeder" cray from my LFS and apparently I bought a berried female who reproduced and died shortly thereafter. The three crays I have are her offspring that survived, and they don't seem to bother each other at all.

I have plenty of rocks which is great for the crays, but unfortunately it's kind of boring to watch. They come out and play when it's feeding time, but then retreat to their respective caves when all the food is consumed.

I'm probably going to get a bigger tank, and I was wondering what I could do to make my tank a bit more interesting to look at (live plants, driftwood, other tankmates, etc). Any suggestions? I'm really interested to see others' crayfish tanks, so if you have photos of a cool cray tank I'd love to see those. Thanks!

 

[petluvr]

How much larger do you plan to go as far as tank size?

 

[Jay_S]

Check out my tank in my profile. it is a 20g same as yours. i will upload the more recent pics of it. but stocking right now is purple big fake plant. orange small plastic tree, purple pearlecent mid size. you can see the orange and pearlecent in the photos. i have blue and black sand in for substrate. my crays are orange. the lighting is the standard "full spectrum" bulb that came with tank with an added blue led. and one octopus cave.

the tank inhabitants are the afformentioned crays p. clarkii i believe, about 20 ghost shrimp. and two glofish barbs (tiger barbs).

the florecent bulb makes the color really pop on the crayfish (named chilly and leo by gf). the barbs are nameless. by only providing one cave atm and a large "silk plant" i provided enough crawdad acessible space for them to roam with out fighting with each other so far (latter hidey spot will be needed) and stay out of each others way when the molt hits. through the use of one cave one is always roaminng around so which ever one is the least shy atm is the one you see in search of food or just haning out in the tree house. they stay very amusing. and the barbs green color really pops bright bright with the blue led light. the contrast between the brightely lit fish and crays and dark decore allow your eyes to really see them and thier activities. and the purple and orange really look cool in the blue light.

the back of the tank is not covered with a background so the light color of the wall and blue light allow a nice xray of the ghost shrimp when they are swimming around.

so i hope that helps some with ideas for yours:thumbsup:

 

[zendx]

I posted a pic of my 20g long in the planted forum... I'll need to take some actual pictures of Lucy & Desi. Yes, I named the female CPO for her coloring & the fact that I'm a fan lol. I've had a few marimo, java fern & java moss for awhile now. I just got some micranthemum umbrosum, hygrophila corymbosa stricta in. Tomorrow I'm going to add the flourite & arrange the tank!

From what I can tell they really like climbing the plants! They also like feeling the baby tears & java moss... I have seen them kind of push the marimo balls around. Lol