Tell me your Crayfish stories!

[pentiumburner]

I have a Hammer's Cobalt Blue and I am contemplating a larger tank. At the moment he is is a 40 Gallon with plenty of hiding places. He seems not to have killed any fish but I do keep him well fed. His species is only supposed to get 5" long, but I may have a mutant since he seems to be growing still and is just coming into his mature blue coloring.

He is fairly entertaing to watch as he scrambles for his food, he also is a voracious eater. I do have other fish in the tank and he seems to ignore them to the point where some of my cories clean him. When he does try to get at any fish his reactions are sloe enough that they get away without getting hurt.

I do agree though that he could be a threat if he gets much larger.

 

[frog girl]

I think if you keep them in food (meat) they probably won't bother fish. They are very territorial though so you I'm not suprised you had to seperate them. Since you already know they can escape easily I will add that they like well aerated water & are much more sensitive to ammonia than fish.

"Did you know you can hypnotize a crawdad?" my dad asked me when I was a wee lass. Well he took a real fighter out of the bucket & held it pinched right behind its claws so it couldn't get to him & started stroking its belly. I was mezmerized & sure enough after a while (a minute or so) that crayfish just lay there in my dads palm not moving a muscle. I was wide eyed & amazed.

Found out later that they have a nerve chord that runs the length of their body right along the midline of the underside. If you stroke it softly it seems to disrupt the nerve chord for a while & they will just lie there apparently dead. Flip them over & in just a sec they are as onrey as ever. It pretty cool actually.

When crayfish fight (if you ever can't seperate 2 males the rip each others claws off). The claws grow back over a series of molts starting out small & getting bigger. I used to often catch big males with one small claw in the river at my dads house. If you have to you can remove one or both claws from the males and they will be unable to damage each other (or catch any fish). Its not very nice but they can still eat because they pass detritus up along their bellies with the walking legs, swimmerets, & mouth parts.

I have sometimes wondered why they don't do this in the lobster or crab fishery since it would be a sort of sustainable harvest.

Anyway those are my anecdotes about crayfish. I have had experience with the blues in the wild in Costa Rica but I already told all about that in another thread.