I'm slowly losing mine. I'm down to three from 9 total.
TKD
Less is more with these and totally opposite of cherry shrimp. They need lots of detrius for the babies. I'm only doing water changes once per week. I keep them with lots of snails and they eat most of the snail babies. Hornwort up the gazoo. Leaf litter on the bottom protects the babies. I'm feeding a combo of sinking pellets used for the Rosenbergii that is around 40% protein with lots of veggie matter, sinking goldfish granules, and spirulina flake. I feed the snails romaine and summer squash slightly cooked and the crays share. lately the cherry shrimp population is starting to bloom.
When my tank was too clean crays did poorly. Now that it looks like a creek bottom they are thriving. I'm using an under gravel filter on course pea gravel powered by HOB's down the bubbler tube. The older the tank the better they are doing.
What sort of ceramic caves are these? Glazed or unglazed? What sort of ceramic? Unglazed terra cotta is safe, but many glazes are loaded with heavy metals. Things safe for fish are not safe for inverts.
TKD, what is the set up in your plastic bin? Perhaps there are too many animals. Quite often crayfish will not come to the top if they can't get enough oxygen, but just lay on the bottom and die.
After hearing stories like his I am sure glad my city completely went away from using Chlorine & chloramines. They have switched to OZONE. Fantastic. Water changes are a breeeze now.
Last edited by CanadianCray on Sat Feb 03, 2007 10:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
The ceramic pots are just the regular brown/orange ones with nothing added. The iron wood was put in there after most of my losses (most were in another aquarium) to try and lower the pH.
There are only 3 crays with about 20 or so cherries.... add yes they do get everywhere.
I had some show up in my 20 planted with no clue as to how they got there, a few times...
Hmmm, so do crays need more aeration then to shrimp?
In my most productive tank I have only the HOB filter that breaks up the surface tension, but no bubler. What I do have is lots of snails and hornwort. I also use an undergravel filter adapted with the HOB so that the HOB provides the flow.
This seems to work magic with the crays. Cherries do OK, but the crays thrive.
My tank that does the best with cherries has lots of java moss and no hornwort.
?
