marbled crayfish killed one of my dwarf frogs :(

R

rastoma

AC Members
Feb 29, 2012
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Jasper, TN
The crayfish is well fed with shrimp pellets and algae wafers. She's never snapped at anything close to her size before. The only thing I can think of is she grabbed the frog and held on until it drowned. It was whole with no apparent damage. But she was still holding on, carrying it around the tank when I caught sight of it. I guess she was looking for a quiet place to have dinner :(
 
FYI, docile crayfish can change behavior at any time. I've seen it happen many times. Once I saw a crayfish that had lived peacefully with fish for over two years snap and go 'postal' and kill off many tank mates.

I think that your crayfish came upon the frog dead, or nearly dead. I say this because of the feeding habits of hunters. Crayfish that hunt usually leave a big mess. They snatch a swimming animal and crush it and start eating right away.
 
All crays are opportunistic. They can/will kill things if they get the chance, no matter how well fed they are. There are NO safe crayfish. Even the dwarfs like CPO's can and will kill small fish, snails, shrimp, and each other.
 
Thanks Jamie.

To everyone else, I agree. I knew that it could happen but the frog was bigger than the crayfish.. well it used to be. The crayfish has grown but was about the same size. Usually the frog wouldn't let the crayfish get close at all, he'd swim away. He could have been dead/dying, but I saw him swimming to the top to breath just about 45 minutes or so before.

But it could be she's going postal as pixl8r mentioned. Last night we found her eating a large mystery snail about twice it's size.

Do they get more aggressive as they get old enough to start developing eggs? I don't know how old exactly she is, but she was about a 1/2" - 3/4" when we got her about a month ago.

Lesson learned though. I'm setting up a 10gal just for the crayfish so no one else will be her meal. Hopefully she's getting close to developing eggs anyway and will be easier to keep them separated.
 
Lol, going postal. I think it could be that she's eating for a dozen or getting ready to. Might explain her sudden binge eating when you're keeping her so well fed. Or maybe fresh food was just so much more enticing.
 
Sorry about the frog :(
I have 4 dwarf frogs and I have to hand feed them all.
My two red claw crabs stay in their turtle dock so thy never meet my frogs.
The crayfish will take to eating slow moving animals... and if the frog was lazy, resting, sick, full from eating, even dying or dead it could very well have been a target.
I have two male and two female dwarf frogs. Had them since they were newly developed (into frogs) and they love flake food with the occasional thawed frozen treat :)


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dwrf frog said:
Had them since they were newly developed (into frogs) and they love flake food with the occasional thawed frozen treat :)
Click to expand...

I couldn't get mine to eat flake food. The ONLY thing they will eat (I got one other one) are frozen blood worms that I have to hand feed every couple of days.
 
I had a similar issue in one of my tanks the frog ended up back at the LFS and the crayfish eventually ended up alone, after the frog fight the crayfish became very aggressive.
 
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