Electric Blue Crayfish Questions

I just woke up and had a thought. What if I essentially "fed" my crayfish by keeping cheap guppies or minnows in the tank for him to hunt. Hopefully this would cause him to ignore my expensive fish and go after the "feeder" fish instead? Would this work? I have room for a school of minnows or guppies easily, and if this satisfies his need to hunt, I don't mind the $.79 guppy or minnow getting eaten occasionally. Seems like a win/win situation. Well, except for the minnows/guppies anyway.

What do you guys think?
 
i keep mine with guppies the only fish they dont mind sharing with and they dont seem to bother them.
 
as for rubber banding that is just cruel. how would you like to go round with your hands cuffed?
 
Don't count on your crayfish consistently eating fish, some do some don't. It may do so, but the odds are not good. Most likely it will kill one every once in a while, or it will decimate the fish population, leaving mangled fish parts all over. Crayfish can be very messy eaters.

I keep platties with my monster C. quadricarinatus. He lives in a 55g tank with proximately 10 - 15 fish at any given time. I feed him pellet food twice a week and he seems to eat a fish a few times a month.
 
as for rubber banding that is just cruel. how would you like to go round with your hands cuffed?

:iagree:That does seem a little harsh. I wouldn't have the heart to do that. I would watch him trying to get it off and I would probaly cry and have to help get it off.

Animals have natural instincts and when ppl go messing around with natural instincts, I personally think that is what makes them mean or eager to hurt you. Just a personal though.
 
We've got a blue cray in her own tank right now, but we have kept feeder guppies and rosie reds in with her. Most of the time she is lazy and hides but every once in awhile when she was hungry she would catch a fish. It rarely happened though because we feed her pellets so she doesn't have a reason to hunt. I might keep them seperate for awhile until you have yours trained to eat pellets and you know its getting fed on a regular basis. Keeping some smaller fish around might not be a bad idea.

Also, I don't think I would rubber band the claws. On thing that our cray loves to do is dig and build. She is always moving the gravel around, making herself a little fortress.
 
Well we got out cray last night and added him in. The fish were interested but didn't attack him. Just swam up and took a look and swam away. Interestingly enough he molted the first night in the tank. This morning he was cruising around like he owned the place. No dead fish. I dropped 3 sinking wafers in there to make sure he had food. So far, so good. Hope it stays this way.
 
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