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Same species.  Quite attractive.

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Learn how to hold your crayfish or suffer the consequences.

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This is Mister Consequences.

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Four young crayfish celebrating their locating a dwarf gourami.

Pincers.  Crayfish use their pincers for protection and to gather food.  They are omnivores.  That means they eat everything – your fish, your plants, your snails.  Nothing organic on the aquarium bottom is safe from your crayfish -- not even other crayfish.  Never take a nap in a pond full of crayfish.

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The crayfish mouth is in his chest -- same mouth as the Predator in Predator I and II.

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Those pointy "limbs' behind his pincers help shred his food into bite-size pieces.

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Crayfish eat what they find.  In this case, they found a dead goldfish.

Scavengers.  Since they eat anything they find, crawdads make good scavengers.  You can mix crayfish with large fish.  They make good scavengers in Oscar tanks (until the Oscar gets big enough to eat them).

Night Shift.  Their long sensitive antennae enable crayfish to find food in low light periods.  They get more active in the evenings, work all night, and work thru dawn.  In the wild, they scurry back to the protection of their burrows when the sun shines.  In our tanks, they start marching whenever you add food to their water.

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The other lobsters disarmed and dislegged this guy.  They may grow back.

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Six weeks later, still no change.  We saw little change for the next four weeks. (?)

Disarmament Procedures.  You can snap off (or super glue or rubber band) their pincers and make crayfish more practical for community tanks.  They re-grow missing appendages (Although we’ve heard and read this more than we’ve seen it.) when they molt – shed their shells.  New owners sometimes panic when they find these empty shells.  They look just like a dead crayfish.  You can smell the difference.

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Here's some obligatory crayfish "love scenes."

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Ah, romance.  Note the little "hearts" on this batch of 100 crayfish from Easter Lake.

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They really concentrate on their reproductive sessions.

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Crayfish vary a great deal in color.

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Yucatan crayfish in berry in July.

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Red lobster in berry in September.  Good grip on that net.

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Red lobster in berry in mid-October.  Now we're talking.  Lotsa eggs.

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Iowa crayfish in berry mid-April.

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Three weeks later the baby lobsters are holding on.  The net catches the loose ones.

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Nine of them came loose in the net.  They eat fine fish food.  They look like regular crayfish.

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Four weeks later about 100 survivors are eating these smallest of the cichlid pellets.

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Yay, no kids.  Empty swimmerettes.  Free at last.  She had about 150.

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Male crayfish.  Larger pincers.  No missing legs.  Undeveloped swimmerettes.

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No idea what you call those things sticking out of his head.

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Scarlet red lobster in berry in July.

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Beau coup eggs held by her swimmerettes.

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Same eggs ready to pop July 27

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Regular crawmommy on 12.31.04.

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Breeding pairs get very involved in the process.

Breeding.  Most crayfish lay eggs in the spring.  Females lay dozens of eggs and attach them to their swimmerettes (their tiny back legs).  These “in berry” females protect their eggs and young.  Her busy little legs move the eggs around and thus aerate them constantly.  Egg hatching time depends upon temperature.  The young stay under her tail until their first molt.  If you pester them and knock them loose, most will quickly return to mom.  In a week or so, they go out on their own.  LA

Crayfish I

Crayfish II

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