Re: {Tidal Potomac Fly Rodders} Raising Crayfish

BTW -- We have hardy, interesting natives in this region.  In general, natives are more hardy than tropicals and tend to do better at most peoples' year round house temperatures. You basically can't kill banded killifish and mummichogs, though chogs get larger than most people can house effectively.  Black nose dace are great, but tend to hide a lot.  Tesselated darters ("tessies") are BULLETPROOF as far as darters go.....gosh, I can't believe they're even a darter considering the nasty places you can seine them around here.  Mosquito fish are great too.  

Frankly, I can't understand a fly fisherman not being at least interested in aquariums -- the behavior you can observe is pretty consistent with the enjoyment you can get from twitching a fly and catching a fish.  

If anyone wants to talk tanks (tropical or native) drop me a line.  I was utterly obsessed with tanks for years before I began fly fishing.  Discus, angels, tropheus, shell-dwellers, etc. Or salamanders, or virtually anything else -- 

Gene

On Monday, July 20, 2015 at 3:18:41 PM UTC-4, TurbineBlade wrote:

At one point I was a card-carrying member of NANFA and a couple of cichlid organizations and had a 125 gallon, 2 55 gallons, a bizarre 50 breeder tank (Oceanic), a 29, and a 10 (I think?).  I've kept and bred all kinds of egg layers, mouth brooders (P. demasoni were a favorite...but they're incredibly territorial, even amongst mbuna cichlids).  In the 125 gallon I had a 7-stripe frontosa tank at its most recent iteration several years ago, but also kept large cichlids and various natives in there.  

Crayfish are about as easy as it gets - they're not even particularly sensitive to nitrogen cycling (i.e. ammonia or nitrite problems), but as Jeff said -- they will catch and eat basically anything they can get....which sometimes isn't much.  On the flip side, Beth can recall me feeding field-caught crayfish to a couple of my larger cichlids at one point.  

Most people fail with aquariums due to nitrogen cycle issues, and usually for adding too many fish (or feeding far too much) too quickly without establishing healthy, nitrifying bacteria to break down the waste.  

Though it's hard to quanify without testing the water, in general with something like a 10 gallon tank I would:

1.  Add 1-2 small fish for the first week

2.  Add 1-2 small fish the second week

3.  Feed sparingly

4.  Test the water and wait for the ammonia spike, then the nitrite spike, and then with both of those are at 0.....do a 25% water change and you're set.  

5.  Thereafter, you should never have to "recycle" the tank, and you'll generally only see nitrate levels....which you reduce via partial water changes.  

For a crayfish, just set up the tank and dump the sucker in there -- they're a hardy creature.  Some kind of sinking pellet will do just fine -- just don't overfeed. 

Gene

On Monday, July 20, 2015 at 9:50:27 AM UTC-4, Bryan wrote:

Gilbert and if a second then Sullivan.

On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 9:45 AM, Misha Gill <mish...@gmail.com> wrote:

After reading the most recent issue of  "A Tight Loop," I just had a bright idea. As the title says, I want to raise a crayfish. We already own a little ten gallon Freshwater tank. No, I'm not planning to clear this with the wife. I bet it takes her 3 days to notice its presence if she doesn't see me put it in. 

So, anyone have any experience doing this? I'm of course doing my research on the internet right now, so i'll save the practical questions. 

Clever name ideas welcome.... 

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