Helpp quickly please ! ( Blue-Clawed Crayfish)

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goldenballer

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Sep 23, 2010
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Canada
i recently bought 2 blue clawed crayfish from a friend. they are being housed with my cons (2+ inches) , a larger severum , a baby JD and a Baby firemouth. will they be safe living with these cichlids ? the crayfish are only 1.5 inches long , still no colour so there pretty young. or should i remove the crayfish to my empty 20 gallon tank ? i don't have a filter for this tank so will they be okay? i think the temperature is 70F in the tank . at what size do they molt ? they've been in with the cichlids for about 4 days now , but i RARELY see them bcuz they hide alot. should i leave them in the tank with the cichlids or should i remove them to a 20G tank by themselves ? also i noticed my male Convict attacked the crayfish but this was probably because the cray had food in his mouth.

thanks in advance !!!!:popcorn:
 
another option would be to remove the Con that is being aggressive to another tank. whats the best way to get my baby cray's to grow quickly ? can they escape when they are this small ?
 
my blue crawfish totally got out once, out of a TALL aquarium on a dresser&8 feet up& was crawling across my bedroom floor when i walked in one day- [scared the sh*t out of me] so yes, they can totally get out of a covered aquarium if they have the means. there was a piece of wood leading up to the top, and he was rather large; just didn't expect him to be that strong to lift the glass lid. his only tank mates at the time were a clown knife, a bichir & a ctenopoma, and i came home one day to find him completely torn in half. he'd tried to molt&i guess the bichir thought he smelled pretty tasty. unfortunate and very expensive dinner. i dunno what kind of luck you'd have with the cichlids, but they might find find them too tasty to resist when they're vulnerably molting.
crayfish can be fed basically any type of fish food, but sticking to fish foods and fish-based pellets [shrimp or carnivore] are the best, since even though crawfish will eat pretty much anything it's not best to feed them random things like beef&pork, but they appreciate live foods, like small fish&earthworms. those will help them grow quickest, they love catching&eating things.
i don't think there will be a need to separate them, though; however if you get worried, isolating them in an unfiltered tank should be alright [though they'd like an airstone], but wouldn't recommend it for long periods. perhaps they will open up a bit and show themselves more once they get bigger; my crawfish was out all the time crawling on everything once he got more used to the setup [&unable to fit in all the small holes he used to..XD]
 
Crayfish and cichlids are best housed separately... Eventually the crayfish is going to eat your cichlids or your cichlids are going to eat the crayfish.

If you wish to keep them together, bare the above statement in mind because it's almost inevitable and I don't want you to be disappointed or disheartened when it does, but provide the crayfish with a lot of rock work/hides/pvc pipe/etc so that it can hide and grow/molt safely. And by the same token, as it grows provide your fish with plenty of places to escape a hunting crayfish.

It's been done before, but whether it's days or months... eventually something gets eaten lol.

Anyway, without specifically knowing what species of crayfish you have it's hard to give accurate information about growth... but in the generic sense, a high protein diet and warmer water will make a crayfish molt and grow more quickly. Blood worms, beef heart, earthworms, live feeders (though, unless you're breeding yourself I advise against them... what's readily available in stores have almost no nutritional value and come with parasites), etc. Do NOT feed them other invertebrates (snails can carry tapeworms and flukes, shrimp processed or fresh can contain WSSV which is fatal if contracted by a crayfish, other crays often carry parasites).
 
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