Ultimately, you want to select fish that swim near the top of the tank, are fast, and freshwater fish that are mildly aggressive. One of the most important things to consider when keeping crayfish as pets is your fish tank size. Crayfish are very dirty and put out a lot of waste. If you keep a crayfish in a tank that is too small, and you have other fish, your fish tank can become very dirty and may experience algae overgrowth and other issues. From my personal experience, I suggest at least a gallon fish tank when keeping crayfish as pets.
This is a good thing. It can save prolong the lives of your other aquatic life and give crayfish pets the space they need. Cleaning a fish tank on a regular schedule will greatly reduce the build-up of algae in your fish tank. Once algae gets out of control, it can be hard to get rid of. I have a gallon aquarium now with a blue crayfish and a neon tetra. So, come up with a cleaning schedule for your tank, but always be ready to do additional water changes as needed.
I get it, the plants are bright pink, green, blue, etc. However, what these people may not understand is that crayfish will destroy any real plant that you place in your tank.
As a matter of fact, my crayfish has actually removed some of the coatings from my plastic plants. Along with eating and hunting, crayfish like to burrow and hideout. To learn how to set up a tank for your crayfish, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No. We use cookies to make wikiHow great. By using our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Cookie Settings. Explore this Article parts. Tips and Warnings. Related Articles.
Article Summary. Part 1. Buy or catch a crayfish. You can often find crayfish for purchase at marine shops that sell tropical fish, as well as some pet stores. Before you start shopping around, do a little reading on the different species and their individual needs.
In some parts of the world, you can catch crayfish in streams or other shallow bodies of water. Just grab a small net and start hunting under rocks until you spot one that will make a suitable pet.
Set up a tank to house your crayfish. Generally speaking, the tank you choose should be large enough to hold at least 5—10 gallons 19—38 L for each crayfish inside.
However, a 15—20 US gal 57—76 L tank is ideal, especially for larger varieties. Look for tanks that feature built-in aeration and filtration units to keep the water clean and circulating properly. Fill the tank with fresh, well-balanced water. Crayfish prefer water with a neutral pH around 7.
You can typically find these kits in the fish section at pet stores, or wherever pool supplies are sold. Avoid adding objects like seashells to your tank, as foreign minerals can throw off the pH of the water. Change the water in the tank at least once a week. Crayfish generate large amounts of waste products that can be taxing on standard aquarium filtration systems. Stick to mounted tube or sponge filters only. Crayfish like to dig, which can end up jamming undergravel filters.
Incorporate a few natural environmental features. Add elements like rocks, water plants, or lengths of PVC pipe to the bottom of your tank. That way, your crayfish will have a place to play, burrow, or hide away for a while. Large structures like hollow rocks, gerbil tubes, or enclosed containers are particularly good for making crayfish feel safe, especially during their vulnerable shedding period.
Shut off any surrounding light sources or keep one side of the tank covered to minimize the amount of light that gets in. Crayfish like it dark. Part 2. Give your crayfish a small amount of shrimp pellets once a day. Pellet-type foods are high in protein and contain all the nutrients crayfish need to grow and develop healthy shells. Crayfish can also have frozen aquarium foods occasionally, such as daphnia, bloodworms, and brine shrimp.
Never feed your crayfish live or uncooked shrimp. Shrimp carry diseases that can be fatal to crays. Every now and then, cut some leaf lettuce, cabbage, zucchini, or cucumber into small strips and drop them to the bottom of the tank.
Offerings like peas, carrots, and sweet potatoes are also okay. In fact, treating your crayfish to veggies that are going bad is a great way to kill two birds with one stone. Avoid overfeeding your crayfish. One or two shakes of shrimp pellets or a smattering of vegetables per day should be more than enough to keep your crayfish satisfied.
Remove any uneaten portions of food soon after feeding your crayfish. Anything left sitting at the bottom of the tank will quickly decompose, dirtying the water and making more frequent changes necessary. Still, keep an eye out for leftovers and scoop them out whatever remnants you find quickly.
Overeating can actually be bad for crayfish, as it causes their exoskeletons to become soft and weak. Part 3. Protect your crayfish from other fish. Crayfish do best when given the run of a spacious tank. Crayfish typically only attack sickly fish that sink toward the bottom of the tank. If you discover your crayfish devouring one of its tankmates, chances are it was close to death anyway. There is a more aggressive option if you plan to keep crayfish in a community tank, to cut half of the inner claw to prevent any nipping or aggressive action with a sterilized knife or scissor.
This still allows the crayfish to pick up food. Every few months, carefully cut the tips of their claws to ensure they don't start nipping fins again.
Large species like cichlids and catfish have been known to attack crays, often resulting in the injury or death of one or both creatures. We have a 7 gallon tank, and it is about 8 cm long. It is pretty active and fast, but so are the shrimp I gues. Some good places to find crayfish are aquabid. Many local forums have a section where people trade and sell fish. I have purchased many on my more rare fish on my local forum.
Also, many of the larger chains can custom order crayfish for you. With that being said, the people I know who have used it, have been pretty happy with it. Another option is Kijiji which is quite popular here for that sort of thing, and the thing that I find the best is local fish forums. Most major cities will have a forum focused on the area, and you can usually find really great people through the forum.
Good luck breeding your crayfish. I hope your successful. I have a red dwarf crayfish in a ten gallon with 6 guppy tank mates and i was wondering if i should buy him a protective one opening cave? Thank you! And if you want to save money on a cave, you can always do it yourself. This creates a very affordable cave, and it will grow a thin layer of algae on it to give it that natural look.
Both of these ideas will cost under 5 dollars. What fish go well with a crayfish he killed all guppies and the tetra neon and the ale guppy survived but if ii start over what fish would go well with him in my 10 gallon. He also was making my Neons part of his diet- so I moved them to another tank. He does alright with the other two varieties- I was told because they are faster moving. Hope that helps!
A crayfish will kill anything you put in with it. Fish, snails, or shrimp in there with her would be like putting a lizard in a closed cage with our cat. If you don't care about the lizard, okay … or, as long as the lizard can adequately hide, okay … All fish are bait to a crayfish. Unless you are very lucky and get a very peaceful crayfish, eventually it will catch and eat anything in its tank. A lot of people disagree with me, but I always recommend crayfish only tanks.
I have 2 large adult crays in my 40 breeder tank and have found that they will ALWAYS hunt fish, but if I supply small feeder minnows or guppies for them to hunt and eat, they leave my larger fish alone.
My son bought a crawfish for his 20 gallon aquarium that also contains goldfish. Its been about six months with no problems even during moulting. My question is now she seems to be loaded with eggs. She is a solo crawfish. Will the eggs hatch? If you have one of those species, then the eggs may be viable. What is far more likely though, is that the crayfish is producing non-viable eggs.
I am considering getting a pair of electric blue crawfish for my community G. I never overpopulate with fish, have 2 magnum filters and undergravel with 4 model 5 pumps. If just the one pair would let some of the offspring survive, I would prefer that. Thank you so much for your input, I just found the site and I am fascinated so far.
What I can say is that more people have success keeping electric blue crayfish with fish than many of the other species. Eventually, the crayfish will start to pick off fish, or the fish will get the crayfish during a molting. The key to crayfish survival is giving them numerous caves and hiding places. The more places that they have to hide, the better their chances of not being cannibalized by other crayfish or eaten by the fish during molting.
Hello Robert I have a blue lobster and he likes to climb the decorative plants and water filter to try to get to the top of the water almost looks like he is trying to escape, is the behavior normal? All crayfish are born escape artists, and they will constantly try to find a way out. Before I started carefully covering my crayfish tank, I used to come home to crayfish running around in my basement.
Hey guys! I was wondering if anyone knew if it would be safe the have 1 crayfish and maybe 2 small creek chubs together in a 10g tank? Creek chubs are a surprisingly tough fish, but you still take a risk when you put fish and crayfish together.
Eventually, either the crayfish, or the fish will likely get injured or eaten. Though in some cases, you can get lucky and keep them together in a well set up aquarium. You should also know that creek chubs get really large. An average creek chub can grow up to 12 inches in length, and will soon need a much larger tank than 10 gallons.
For adult creek chubs you need something along the lines of 55 gallons at the bare minimum. I find them a lot more interesting than most of the tropical fish out there. I would make sure to have a large tank, with plenty of hiding places for them. I would recommend at least 29 gallons, though larger would be better. How long do they mate for.
I have to crayfish that have been clutched together for over two hours now. In my experience, it tends to last about half an hour. But all kidding aside, if they mate for too long you should try to separate them. Sometimes the mating goes wrong, and the male gets increasingly frustrated and may kill the female.
Though hopefully by now, things will have worked themselves out in your aquarium. I have a little crawfish and shes been laying on her back for about a week.
At first I figured she was molting, but after a few days and no progress Im a little worried. She will flip herself right side up, crawl around for awile and then flip back over. Last night she was zooming around and then all the sudden just flipped onto her back. Today I offered some food and she chowed down, but now shes on her back again. Any ideas? The general consensus is that this is caused by iodine deficiency. I would immediately pick up a marine iodine supplement, and begin to add it to your crayfish tank.
My blue crayfish had babies about a week ago. A good majority of them are still hanging out under her tail, but there are a bunch that have left her and are moving freely about the tank. Should I be moving her away from the babies now? I would remove the parent as soon as possible. It sometimes helps to subdivide the fry into separate tanks based on size.
That reduces the cannibalism a fair bit. I have a red swamp crayfish,i heard that we have to find the ideal temperatures,but the problem is my aquarium is warmer,how to cool it down? Also,how to clean a sand gravel? There are three main ways to cool down an aquarium.
The first is relocating it to a cooler part of the house. The second is to limit the amount of sunlight that the room and aquarium receive. If neither of those would work, then you can set up a fan to blow across the surface of the aquarium. This will help to dissipate some heat.
As for the sand, just hover the gravel hose a few centimeters above the surface, and it will pick up the waste without the sand. You may need to experiment a little bit, but the waste will always be lighter than the sand.
There could be several reasons for this. It may be stress, water quality, or nutrition. I would start with checking your water quality, and looking for sources of stress other crayfish, aggressive fish, etc.
If that seems fine, I would try a marine iodine supplement, to see if that helps at all. I got two crawfish from the WARF can I put them in my 29 gallon tank with my goldfish,gubbies,black mollies,neonfish. A slow fish like goldfish would become a quick meal for the crawfish. And this is sentiment that is pretty widely shared by other aquarists.
They are a cold water fish, and if the temperature is too warm, for too long, they will start to suffer nerve damage, and may die. If at all possible, I would transfer them to a cold water tank as soon as possible. I would recommend a minimum of 19 litres at the minimum. And then it would only keep very young hatchlings alive.
In my experience, you start to experience massive cannibalism by the time they reach about a centimeter in crowded conditions. It all depends on what country you are in. However, with that being said, you can often find very cheap, very basic aquariums at any of the major chain stores. Ignore the big kits that cost cost dollars.
I know in Canada, you can purchase a setup like this for about 25 dollars. The sponge filter is about 15 dollars and the aquarium about 10, and then I use play sand for the substrate and river rocks to create caves.
Very cheap, and yet still a great place to keep crayfish. Some turtles enjoy eating crayfish, but those are mostly larger ones like snappers. Do you have a turtle in mind for keeping them with? My crayfish is being still for the second day now, he moves a little bit and than freezes like dead, also his eyes start to seem blurry. Before a molt, its common for it to really slow down, and it will most likely try and find a hiding place soon.
Beyond that, just make sure that your water quality is alright, and continue to try and feed it a high quality food removing any excess, since they tend to stop eating before a molt. Thank you for the reply!
Water quality is ok. My money is on it becoming ready for a molt. My crayfish would often get cloudy eyes right before a molt. Keep an eye on it though just to be on the safe side. You can tell from the filaments protruding from between the plates. I have a red clarkii crayfish and it has molted….
It is blue now! Is that a common thing? I cant seem to find info about a red crayfish turning blue on the internet. The decorations in the tank are all red, and the gravel is black. I dont know if this has anything to do with the color of the crayfish.
I have one shrimp in the tank with it, and nothing else. I hope you can give me an answer on this topic. I wish that I could help you with this one. It definitely makes the crayfish a lot more desirable though. I only saw this site on pintrist today March 3, but if you are still there I have also had red crayfish turn blue. I heard that if common crayfish like the ones I caught in my local river are more red when the water is colder and more blue when the water is warmer.
So it will get bluer after each molt if the water is kept at normal room temperature. At least that has been my experience. Shrimp pellets should make up most of their diet. But you should also add blanched vegetables and frozen fish food too. As for the fish food, I occasionally offer cubes of bloodworms and brine shrimp to mine. If they are breeding, you may also want to consider adding a marine iodine supplement that you can pick up at fish stores.
Just be careful having that many crayfish though, unless you have a huge aquarium. I have 5 red 3 white and 2 blue with the 1 white one having eggs on her back, when she still with the other crayfish, she eat her own egg by pick it up from her back.
So i move her to new aquarium, she always climb my pipe and then she fell, will the egg hatch? Crayfish will often eat their eggs if they are stressed. I would expect that the eggs will still hatch, as long as they were fertilized in the first place. She chilled out quickly. Still waiting on the rest of the eggs to hatch. I separated my female into her own tank last night as he young were being released. I last looked at her around 1am and all was still good she was still releasing them but when I checked again at am the female had de clawed herself and all the young were dead with half still attached to mum.
What did I do wrong or why do you think this has happened. I wish that I knew. Was the water treated, and how did you introduce it to the tank? I have a white crawfish, female. She just went through her second molt. Her first one white and her second one blue, Im not sure what this means, some kind of nutritional deficiency? Also, she seemed to have injured her claw.
Ive heard of them declawing themselves in certain situations, was this injury or stressed based? The injury during molting is a far more common problem. While there are numerous possible reasons as to why this may have happened, the most common one is that there is an iodine deficiency in your crayfish. In most countries you can order it online. And if it really becomes a problem, just make your own fish food and use it for crayfish food.
There are numerous great recipes online, and most of them will still work well for crayfish. You may want to reduce the amount of shellfish and fish in the recipes slightly though, and increase the amount of vegetables.
Ladies and Gentle, please advise??? Just keep the tank clean, and her well fed, and assuming that the eggs are viable, they should hatch in the near future. After they hatch, and the hatchlings become free moving, you should the mother from the tank. I saved my crayfish from my biology class. He is a 3 inches long and mostly brown with a touch of red.
I bought him a 1 gallon tank with a filter, lid, a hollow rock to hide in and a fake plant to climb up. I have been feeding him blood worms, lettuce and carrots. He was covered in a fuzzy fungus so I used Pimafix to treat it -per the reccomndation of the pet Co employee. He has barely moved since day 6 of the 7 day treatment. Could the treatment be causing this?
I have had him for 8 days now and he was fine before! Treatments like Pimafix can be very hard on even healthy invertebrates. It may be that the crayfish is just having a hard time recovering from the treatment, so you may just need to give it time. Just keep offering it high quality food, and keep the aquarium clean. Good luck. What do we need to keep it? At the very least you need a 5 gallon container of some sort. Then you will need to add a filter. Probably the cheapest and easiest to find is a sponge filter, though you have to watch out for it crawling up the air hose.
If you do that, then it should be happy and healthy. Are there any household foods i could give it until im able to get some pellets? I put a couple leaves of lettuce in the container a few hours ago but so far it hasnt touched it. Also how often should it be fed? Some of their favorite foods in my experience are lightly boiled zucchini or cucumber medallions, boiled broccoli florets and shelled peas.
You can also offer very small amounts of salt water fish ie. Also, they generally prefer to feed at night, although they can be trained to be fed very early in the morning, or later in the evening.
I know mine tend to be most active after the lights go out in their tank. Move female dwarf crayfish with eggs — How to Can I move the female dwarf crayfish with eggs to a different tank? Any advice would be appreciated. You can move her, but it can be hard on your crayfish to move it into an uncycled tank.
If you move her, then you will need to change the water daily, at least until the conditions stabilize. Also, you may want to find a more gentle way to move her. If possible, try using a large container to gently move her out of her tank.
A net may be too hard on her and the eggs. Robert, thanks for all your crayfish knowledge. I am a third grade teacher and we teach with the FOSS kits. For the first time, we found a mama on Tuesday morning with eggs. We had worked with her on Monday so we have a pretty good indicator when the eggs were laid. Today, Thursday, we came to school to find another mama putting eggs under her tail. Pretty fascinating We have them in tubs so the kids can see them and work with them.
We move them to a separate basin to feed them except for elodea in their containers. I have separated the mothers. How often should I feed them? Will the babies be okay in the basins as long as I put in homes and things for them to hide under??? The sad part is we will probably be out of school before any of them hatch. They should be fed every day, but you will always need to searched for any food they have hidden during the weekly water changes and cleaning.
We have a blue crayfish and we are getting ready to move, we have planned on rehomeing things out of our 30 Gallon tank. It is a big move.. A good rule of thumb is that a crayfish will try to eat anything that it shares a tank with — be it plant or animal. I hope this helps. We have three freshwaters and I wanted to confirm that this is indeed true — I hand feed them all!
Hey my blue crawfish had no then mate and all of a sudden it had a sack of eggs weeks pasted and it buried the eggs after that the eggs turn pink? And the crawfish died what do I do with the pink eggs? This is especially true since they were discarded by the female. However, on the off chance that some might still hatch, the only thing to do in this situation is to keep the aquarium water clean, and watch and wait. When I bought my blue crawfish, it was alone in a tank with a lot of tropical fish.
Months had past since I had him and all of a sudden my blue crawfish had a black sack of eggs. The tank I had my crawfish was a 15 gallon, with two neon tetras. So my crawfish ended up burying the eggs after a while the eggs stated to turn pink, my crawfish ended up dying a few weeks later, but the pink eggs are still there what should I do?
I have a really ill crayfish she is beautiful but has been itching like mad the last week and running around the tank like she is trying to climb out. Is there any medication I can add? It sounds more like there is a problem with your water. Have you tested your water parameters lately?
I would experimentally do several large water changes over the next few days to see if that helps, and I would definitely get your water tested. I would also search your tank to see if there is anything rotting in there. And crayfish are also known to hoard food, so during the next water change, search to see if there are any hidden stashes of food. You need to add ornaments and caves for them to hide in. Soo hi I find this page very helpful since just yesterday I decided to raise one when my father caught one!
I have a few questions to ask too: If I place some live worms with the crayfish will the crayfish go for it??? I only have a small circle container with one crayfish in it, plus the rocks so it can breath. Any advice?? You definitely need something much larger to keep it in. I would recommend any type of non-toxic container until you find a more suitable home for your crayfish.
They actually prefer vegetables and maybe consider the worms as more of a weekly treat. Crayfish can actually survive fully submerged in water, but you should add an air stone, or sponge filter if you can afford it.
So thanks for the advice! Is this okay for the crayfish, since I had read that leaving shells in the same place as a crayfish can be bad for it.
Also, since the shell sticks out of the water, the crayfish fully submerges from the water when it chooses to climb on top of the shell. Is that bad? And if i wash the live worm with water, will that wash off the pesticides and insecticides? Thanks so much for you time and patience! But keep up with the vegetables. Just make sure to remove any uneaten vegetables after 24 hours or it will start to rot.
Where did you hear that? The concern comes from collecting them outside in an area that may have been recently sprayed. So thanks! I apologize for waking you up early again at12 am! I feel a little better now. Every night I hear the scratching sounds of the crayfish at night. And my father uses minnow fish I believe for his bait, and yesterday one of his died, so I tried feeding my crayfish that and he gobbled it all up! Is it alright if I feed him one most days of the week?
Because the whole container becomes foggy and dirty. After a few weeks of observation, I notice my crayfish do a funny thing. You know those leg things on the bottom of her large tail? As much as it amuses me watching her do that, I would love to know if you know why.
We are deep in crawfish boil country, and our female red North American crayfish was a rescue 3 weeks ago from a big annual crawfish boil we always attend. Our sons 8 and 11 wanted to keep her, so she remained on the table while we ate, then went home in a tupperware container.
That was 3 weeks ago. Very cool. I had no idea a seasonal foodstuff could be such a good pet. Do you know what it means when our crawfish approaches and waves all of her maxilla, or when she seems to do a little dance involving all of her legs?
Sometimes she does both at once. What is this? The water is changed every day we use water conditioning drops. Is this too often? Is this enough space? If she still needs to molt at full size, do they still molt? Would it be unhealthy to let her run around on the floor for a few minutes during water changes?
Thanks so much for hosting this site and sharing your knowledge. But you do see it in nearly all species of crayfish though only very rarely in the dwarf crayfish for some reason. As for your aquarium for your crayfish, it is definitely too small at this point. For a crayfish that large you should probably have around a gallon tank, and it should be filtered. I like to use sponge filters since they are both cheap and excellent aerators. When transitioning from air to water, they should be placed in water no higher than their head for a few hours a bucket works for this.
After that, they can be added back to the aquarium, but they should be held upside down to allow any air bubbles trapped in their gills to become dislodged.
Hi Robert! As a follow-up, our crayfish has been doing well. She had eggs, but gradually they all fell off. My question is: Research tells me she should completely molt during a hr period.
This crawfish has been molting for 4 days. Does she need outside help to free it? Or should we leave her alone? Sometimes crayfish have a rough molt, but you should definitely leave her alone.
You might want to try adding some iodine to the water in the future. It helps with the molts, and you can get marine iodine to add — though you should only add it at about half the recommend strength. There will be a next time; she was a fantastically interesting and engaging pet. She died overnight. Thank you so, so much for your advice and help. This board has been amazing. Have learned so much. Keeping a crawfish was a great experience. I have an electric blue with eggs that started out brown, but turned orange within a week or so.
They will have been there for one month tomorrow. Is this normal? You can safely remove them at this point if she drops them. Otherwise just wait until she does, or she eats them. The eggs tend to die one by one, so it takes a while before they start to fall off. They usually start falling off one at a time. We just acquired a crayfish…not sure what breed. We have a small gallon tank, no filter yet and there is just a little bit of water…I assume for ease of transport.
My question is how much water should I put in the tank and how often does it need to be cleaned, what kind of water tap? Can I feed it corn until I get other food? I am really clueless how to keep this little guy.
You can fill the tank up to almost to the rim with no problem. As for the filter, the cheapest choice is usually a sponge filter and pump, which you can normally get for around 15 dollars. It requires very little maintenance, and lasts for a very long time. All you have to do is squeeze it to clean it during weekly water changes. The water can be tap water, but it should always be treated to remove any chlorine.
You can buy bottles of water conditioner from any fish or pet store in your area. The crayfish may eat corn, but you should stick to lightly boiled vegetables like zucchini, cucumbers, broccoli, and romaine lettuce. You can also pick up shrimp or invertebrate pellets from a fish store, and just offer vegetables as an occasional treat. This is usually the easier option, and shrimp pellets are very cheap. The one we have is a plastic reptile tank. Also, is putting gravel down a good idea?
Thanks again. Please help whoever knows. I work at a pet store and one of the blue lobsters has something going on with it. Is she pregnant? Or was she pregnant and the babies are dead? Is she sick? I have no idea. Also, if they are babies. Should I isolate her from the other? Need all the suggestions I could get. Thank all!!!! It sounds like the eggs have turned, but otherwise the female still sounds alright.
If by some chance they have hatched by now sorry about the delay in response, I was on vacation , then they should be isolated as soon as possible. We have had a crayfish now pregnant for over 3 months! What is happening and when will they hatch? Nothing seems wrong and the female looks happy enough…. What colour are the eggs? Usually a crayfish only carries the eggs for about a month or so. Healthy eggs should be a purplish black colour almost. That is correct, nice almost blackish colour and all looks healthy.
What species of crayfish is it? Hi robert, I have a white crawfish which molted approx 1 wk after purchase expected , but, it then molted again within 2 wks! How large is your crayfish? It may just be that your crayfish is getting a lot of food and has very good conditions.
Crayfish molt to grow their body, and if they have an excellent food source, they may grow quicker.
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