Crayfish feeding

[Goodair]

Anyone got any experience with breeding or using them as feeders?

Was having a discussion with someone about breeding shrimp for feeders, but in a tank that's a little more decorative. Friend mentioned marbled crayfish are pretty easy to breed, bigger and might be something interesting to do.

 

[lion king]

Are they hard bodied more like a crab, or soft bodied more like a shrimp. The crayfish we used to catch we use in SC were hard bodied. Lions, scorps, bettas. won't eat hard bodied inverts. Eels and fish like triggers and puffers would likely love them.

 

[Goodair]

I'm not sure, they get up to 3 to 5 inches, but likely will be swapped over when they are 1-2", so I'm assuming thier shells shouldnt be much thicker than a shrimp at that size.. Takes 5-7 months to mature and start breeding, with 3 month intervals between new clutches.

The thing that seems enticing is thier color will change according to thier diet, so they can go from blue, tan and red. They are also morw tolerable to nonperfect conditions relative to typical inverts.

As for shrimp, ghosts seem to be the ideal choice but I added one to my sister's freshwater tank just to see what it was like, and it was kinda hard to spot. Shrimp like cherries look better but are too small and doesn't make sense to breed if I gotta add so many of them to equal a ghost.

 

[lion king]

Do a quick search as I remember reading somewhere that cherry shrimp where not a good choice as a feeder. I always dismissed them because of their size, I'd literally be feeding 100s per week. But then I read something that made me think it wasn't a good idea.

 

[Goodair]

I won't be doing cherries, thier size isn't worth it. The reason im considering crayfish is they are more interesting (especially the color coleration to feeding) than ghost shrimp, and probally equal or more nutritious.

You brought up a good point on thier shells being too hard, as the radiata and comet might not enjoy it.

At worse if crayfish doesnt work out, the setup shouldn't change at all switching to ghost shrimp.

 

[lion king]

They may be as nutritious but I have seen them on list of high in thiaminese. When feeding live this isn't as worrisome, as the natural amount of B vits more than make up for it. That's another reason to feed fresh dead when feeding shrimp or other food with thiaminese, the nutrients in fresh more than makes up for it.

 

[ichthyogeek]

Look up CPOs, those are colorful, and larger than cherry shrimp. I don't know how well they breed though. Or the neat ones that don't need males because they reproduce via parthenogenesis.

What are you trying to feed?

 

[Goodair]

Marbled crayfish/self cloning crayfish are the ones that dont need males. I'll take a look at cpos.
Stock is a radiata, comet, snowflake, and down the road a wrasse like a harlequin or hogfish.

 

[ichthyogeek]

It sounds like you're more looking for smaller fish (radiata, comet) as well as invertebrates for food. Have you considered breeding guppies or mollies in addition to the invert of your choice?

 

[Goodair]

I plan on doing mollies in my sump to eat gha and add some life to it, its been a project that I built a bigger sump for but keep pushing it back. If it works, it might be a nice suppliment but slow.

 

[Goodair]

From some non in depth reading, the size of cpos look good and you can mix tetras or some community fish, but they look more cannibalistic when molting. Not sure if it will drop the population significantly, or if marbled are the same. Would need to weigh out the pros and cons of both species.

 

[Goodair]

I'll try to start setting up for December and do a progress thread. Likely marbled crayfish and regular guppies. The mollies in the sump will be another time as I'm not expecting that trial to be great and have some soft macro algaes in there growing seperate from my urchin.