LA 
LA and Steve seining for crayfish last millennium.

Catch Your Own?  If you want large quantities of crayfish, use a minnow seine.  The 15-foot long ones will collect scads of these pincered scavengers.  If you need only small quantities, they’re more practical to buy.  They’re an inexpensive pet – initial cost and maintenance.

Several Uses.  Commercially, crayfish fall into the food (for people) and bait categories.  And then there’s the fun category.  It's fun to watch bait store workers count these out.  Ask for a dozen the next time you're in a bait store.  It's cheap entertainment.  Our use of them as pets is not sufficient to register on the national salesometer.

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Tasty size crayfish.  Mixes with fish about 60 days.  

Educational.  However, they also fall into an educational category.  All third grade teachers in our DSM biotope teach a “Crayfish Unit.”  Most kids have to share their crayfish.  The lucky ones get to take theirs home after the unit ends.  Lucky for the kids.  Maybe not so lucky for the crayfish.  But their chances of survival are not great in the wild either.  Survivors live about three years.  Most get eaten young -- very young.  

Some 500 species of crayfish exist worldwide.  About 150 species live here in the U.S.  Most are about the size you find locally.  One crayfish in Tasmania grows as large as an eating-size lobster.  Technically, lobsters are probably saltwater critters.  Crayfish live in freshwater.  Lots of those rock lobsters from South Africa are really crayfish.

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This red lobster (crayfish) lost his pincers in a fight.  

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Two weeks later.  No real change.

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Red lobsters like to eat other red lobsters.  

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Red lobsters making more red lobsters.

Red Lobsters are really crayfish.  You can’t seine these out of our local creeks.  You probably knew that.  But you could find them in a local creek somewhere.  The same easy-to-follow upkeep rules apply.  They are more likely to de-pincer each other than our smaller local crayfish.

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Blue lobster (crayfish).  Pretty, but still not a good mixer.

Blue Lobsters originally from Australia are not as numerous, so they cost a lot more.  They’re just as easy to keep.  If someone tells you these guys will not eat fish ... 

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Of course blue lobsters (crayfish) eat fish.  Get real.

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What makes people say they don't eat fish?  

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Captive-born Yucatan crayfish get bluer as they mature.

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Wild caught Yucatan crayfish.  Check out his strange pincers.

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Younger Yucatans have less of that pincer growth.

Yucatan Crayfish.  Supposedly, these guys do not eat fish.  We gave ours a half-dozen dead goldfish.  They ignored them.  Yucatans do pinch people (your photographer, for example) and they hold onto a net as hard as any other crayfish.  Beware mixing any crayfish or lobster with fish.  The parents of the first Yucatan had pincers covered with a net-like filtering material that limited their fish-catching abilities.  Perhaps they adapted to their Iowa environment?  These smaller than average crayfish love to crawl out of their tank.  You cannot keep them in without a lid.

Yucatan Info.  We just call them Yucatan crayfish because two of our German customers captured them and brought them back from Yucatan.  We haven’t seen these strange crawdads on any price lists and probably won’t.  They are way pricier than our Iowa crawdads.  For more info go to Yucatan crayfish.

Decapods.  Crayfish belong to the Decapod order.  This means they have 10 legs – their two well functioning pincers, plus the eight legs they use for locomotion, hugging each other, and food gathering.  LA 

Crayfish and Lobsters 3

Jaguar Spawning II
Jewel Fish
Keo's Flowerhorns
Keo's Flowerhorns II
Kribensis
Oscars 1
Oscars 2
Oscars 3
Oscars 4
Oscars 5
More Oscar
More Oscar II
More Oscars III
More Oscars 2007
Peacock Bass
Red Devils
More Red Devil  
Red Parrots
Red Parrots Spawn
Pikes
Pink Tilapia
Rams
Red Bay Snooks
Roger Stephen's Cichlids
Severums
More Severums
Severums III
Tanganyikans
Texas Cichlid
Texas Spawning
Texas Spawn II
Uarus
Misc Cichlids I
Misc Cichlids II
Misc Cichlids III
Misc Cichlids IV
Misc Cichlids V
Misc Cichlids VI
Misc Cichlids VII
Misc Cichlids VIII

Livebearer  
Guppies
Half-Beak
Mollies
Moons/Platys
Swordtails

Minnows/Tetra 
Barbs
Barbs, Black
Barbs, Gold
Barbs, Rosy
Barbs, Tiger
Barbs, Tinfoil
Danios
Distochodus
Fathead Minnows
Headstanders
Killies, Econ.
Killies, Golden
Killies, Peat
Killies, Plant
Misc Mini-Fish
Pacús 
Piranha, Black
Piranha, Red
Rainbowfish

Rainbowfish, Dwarf Neon
Rainbowfish, Irian
Silver Dollar
Tetras, Larger
Tetras, Smaller
Tetras, Spawn
Tetra, Vampire
White Clouds

Pond Fish
Carp
Channel Cat
Gold. Comets
Gold. Fantails
More Fantails
Gold. Oriental  
Gold Oriental II 
Gold. Spawn
Kloubec Koi Farm
Koi
Koi II

Koi III
Plecostomus
Shubunkins

Oddballs  
Af. Butterfly
Af. Lungfish
Af. Mudskippr
American Eel
Archer Fish
Arowana
Bichirs
Borneo Suckers
Brackish I
Brackish II
Brackish III
Brackish IV
Brackish V
Michael Troung's Pix
Butterfly/Wasp
Chameleon Fish
Chromides
Chin Alg Eater
Crazy Fish
Crocodile Fish
Datnioides
Dojo
Electric Cat
Electric Eels
Elephant Nose
Exodon paradoxus
Flounder
Gars  
Glassfish
Goby Bumble
Goby Butterfly
Goby Dragon
Goby Misc.
Half-Beak
Knife African
Knife Clown
Knife Ghost
Loach Botias
Loach Clown
Loach Kuhli
Loach Weather
Moray Eel  
Peacock Gudgeons
Polypterids
Puffers
Ropefish
Scats
Siam Algae Eater 
Spiny Eels 
Snakehead
Stingray
Stonefish
Wasp Fish
Wolffish
Wrest Half-Beak
Misc Mini-Fishes
Misc Odd
Misc Odd II
Misc Odd III
Misc Odd  IV

Misc Odd V

Sharks  
Bala
Black
Bull
Chinese Hi-Fin Banded
Iridescent
Red-Tail
Siam Algae Eater

Pond Info 
Blank Park Zoo
Bob Humphrey's Ponds
Cattails
Maffett Reservoir
DMACC's Pond
D.M. Botanical Center
D.M. Water Works
Dr. Ervanian's Garden
Duckweed
Dwarf Lily
Ewing Park "Pond"
Jan & Chris's Water Garden
John McDonald's Pond
Hall's Four Acres
Klines' Water Garden
Landscaper Effects
Mini-Pond Pics
Pioneer Corn's Pond
Pond Fish Predators
Pond on 38th Street 
Pond Pics
Pond Plants
More Pond Plants
Pond Plants III
Reiman Ponds
River Scenes
Riverview Island
Selin's Water Gardens
Selin's Japanese Garden
Tom's Used Cars Pond
Urbandale Duck Pond
Water Hyacinth
Water Lettuce
Wild Ponds