Let's Put Some Crayfish In My New "Native Tank" 

When I was in high school, I'm now 70, I usta find crawfish for my "Pond Tank" that were all brown (no pattern) on Long Island, NY. I have had "tropical" crawfish but I still miss my native crawfish catching. The pond where I would find them has since grown over and gone.

Paddling about in the stream reminds me of my childhood. Maybe I should explore my local stream. Thanks Dan.

I miss my crawfish tank, had one when I was a teenager, watching you set up your tank, and catch them brought back some verry happy memories. I want another one. I liked to also add perch, and baby catfish, as well. Loved watching them eat. They did really well in the tank. ❤

Our fam made a native tank in a 29 Gallon we acquired for free. So we filled with river rock, sand, even river grass and plant life as well as wood. Minnows and crawdads. Fun to watch them tunnel

I love crayfish. They have so many different tools on their bodies. They’re like little Swiss Army knives

Planning on doing this myself come spring

In the long run in 29gallon+ it can support more than u would think. We had 10-15 all sizes. No death or bad fights. So fun to watch! Like bulldozers making their homes too! Awesome tank!

They uproot everything lol. Have to constantly replace plant life, but worth watching them. Some will flame a blade of y’all grass and just hangs out all day on it. Busy creatures more than a lot of popular aquarium pets

My daughter and mother caught some crawfish 🦞 right next to our property. They are still babies, we’re excited!

I love the natural look in your aquarium. Definitely looks like a nice stream

I have a dishpan outside growing some floating lettuce for my turtle and discovered a crayfish in it! It's like 4" long 0.0 so I'm wondering if maybe I should keep it and actually take care of it. It's literally in a dishpan of water on the ground outside!

I just got rocks from the creek and put it in the tank and its fine

There's no need to sterilize everything. Micro organism's are needed to eat the decomposing debris. And will help eliminate the ammonia.

What a great video. I have watched quite a few crayfish videos and this one is the best. I realize if a hobbyist has money to spend there are very many colorful and rare species to buy at the aquarium stores but most of the hobbyist have no idea of how much fun it is to go catch your own in a stream. I can see you have done this for a while since you know about the colorful Darters and the camouflaged Sculpins. As for the Sunfish all I can say is when I was a young boy I had a fair-sized Bluegill, about 8 inches long, and a huge Crayfish I had raised from a small size. I put them together in a tank that was really too small for them. I was worried about the Bluegill getting eaten since the crayfish was large, about 6 inches, with big claws. I thought I would separate them if problems arose. Overnight they must have fought it out. In the morning the crayfish was all but dead and his eyes had been eaten. The Bluegill showed no signs of battle at all. Perhaps in a bigger tank with ample hiding places, they could coexist. I think minnows, darters, and sculpins would make far better tank mates. Watch out though about wild caught minnows as they aren't always minnows. Though they look like it some are actually the spawn of much larger fish which you will realize when you see them swallow fish nearly their own size and then begin to grow much larger. Many a hobbyist think of minnows as feeder fish but a school of them in the aquarium is actually beautiful and fun to watch. they are very hardy in the aquarium and cheap if you lose them. I share all your thoughts and observations about crayfish and have always loved watching their industrious behavior. I love the natural look of your native tank.

I love this video, I just did one similar myself on my very small channel 😂"a beautiful day at the creek" we have a beautiful spring-fed limestone Creek behind the house. And we can catch dozens and dozens of them. We're in Kentucky (where we are from) visiting but we live in Virginia for right now (my daughters in the Navy and almost done)I can't wait to get back here and set up me a native Aquarium! I hope I can include the crayfish and some of the little tiny newts or salamanders! Plus we found a bunch of Creek chubs..I enjoyed coming along with you we basically just went down and plundered around in the creek but boy we saw plenty of them! Have a good one Dan I really enjoyed the video! 😁✌️🌱🐟💚🙏

Awesome tank! Just a heads up, crayfish are escape artist and will climb up that piece of wood. I have a lid on my tank and still find mine waiting at the top peeking above the waterline.

I absolutely love native tanks!! I've been working on mine for while and I've thought about doing videos but idk. I have a massive male green sunfish, a crappie, a river chub, an a pleco for cleaning purposes. I also have a shallow water crawfish pool cause they like to hurt my fish lmao. But I think there's something just so much cooler about wild caught fish and an marine life that just doesn't hit the same as per store fish.

I like what you did with the rocks and gravel. It looks very pleasing and you will have a good view once you have stocked it.

They also like to climb a branch sticking out of water. Great job

That’s a HUGE FROG.

I'm also in Maryland. Southern Maryland. I haven't had an opportunity to catch crayfish in several years. Would love to check out some of these creeks, ponds and lakes to grab some versus paying for them at the store. Anyway, I will have to make it a point to get out there like you did and flip some boulders over. Ha! Love your tank. It really does have that creek environment to it. Those crayfish I'm sure are having a ball. Well done.

My craw is cool. He lives with 5 Fat Head Minnows and 6 Bluegills. His name is Mr Cray Cray, and he is an odd fellow. He refuses to clean the bottom or eat anything but algae wafers, and he insists on being hand fed at the same time every day. Same spot also.... If I do not hand feed him at his time he grabs rocks and throws them around and he uproots plants and cuts them in half..... Oddly his bright blue colors match perfectly with gray rocks, and I added a few really small blue rocks to help him out with camo. The tank is run by the minnows who bully the Bluegills and sometimes Mr Cray Cray. Yes, as odd as it sounds the tank is run by the minnows. When I started the tank, I put in plants and allowed the tank to cycle. Then I added minnows and allowed them to grow. Then I added the Bluegills and the crawdaddy. The minnows were larger and already established so they just ran the tank like gangsters. Then I added a Hillstream Loach because Mr Cray Cray refuses to clean the bottom and it became a health issue. Now the tank is technically not a native tank, but the loach is small and hard to see. He makes a big difference as he actually cleans and does what Mr Cray Cray was supposed to do in the ecosystem....

*Nice Tank* 👍

I can tell you really miss your original 125 native tank... I already can picture you going to the bridge throwing your little hanging minnow trap to the stream running below! I used to enjoy those times!

Looking good can't wait to see it planted.

Tank looks awesome Dan. Love the idea of a native tank

Being raised in Maryland, along the Potomac river. I never saw native crayfish either

I used to have a Crayfish, that I called Ronnie Cray and he caught every single fish, in the tank!

My fancy ass never had a creek near by so my dad bought me a bambo shrimp. Such an interesting buddy. They use their feather like claws to filter water from parasites and other microscopic beasties. My dad had other aggressive fish but never bothered my bambo shrimp.

This is my favorite tank you have.

Easy way to catch crayfish. The next time you have fish for dinner set some aside. Drop it in the stream bed and stand very still with net in hand. About ten minutes later the crayfish will be all over that fish. Then you just take one swipe with the net and you got yourself several crayfish.

It’s interesting to me that you mentioned the Virile Crayfish are the only ones you have seen. Here in Northern Nevada it is said that we have the Signal Crayfish. I have also only seen the Viriles; yet the USGS has little to no survey info on these in my state.

My crayfish just died i am me and my brothwr were crying its sad cus a crayfish is like my sibling and my crayfiah name was chaki and she was a female and i love her so much 😇😇❤❤

Dang thats a lot of crawdad in them there waters

20 something years ago, I was out with my gf at the time by this small pond that sat twenty feet from Lake Michigan in the city and saw this tiny, half inch crayfish by the shore waters of said pond and scooped it up into a bottle, took it home, and literally raised it to an inch and a half in a 6 inch round Petrie dish that was 4 inches tall... Just fed it bloodworms that I had from the last betta I'd raised... Was gonna grab a tank but ended up freeing the guy back to the pond... Now I'm considering doing this exact same thing in this video but doing it just as proper and to the best of my ability... How do you "sanitize" rocks properly? Or add wood?

I think sculpins and other small bottom dwellers would be a very interesting look, maybe not wise with all the crayfish though. Excited for whatever comes next!

Sorry if this is resolved later, I'm only around 2min in, but couldn't the nitrate increase you're seeing be caused by the breakdown products of anything living in the rock, sand, etc, as it died and decayed from the peroxide?

Usually after a good rain I can go out to the bar ditch in front of the house by the road and catch crayfish. They're usually burrowed into the ground with a mound of mud on top, usually it's just a matter of pulling the mound off if the hole isn't exposed and fishing them out with a piece of bacon tightly tied to some fishing line. I'm in Texas and the adults can get pretty large and are very agressive so I wouldn't be putting them in with anything less than something the size of an adult convict cichlid or the like. Way back in the 80's my older brother put one into our 55 gallon community tank that my parents had and he commenced to ambush and eat slow moving fish, lol. I'm thinking about setting up a crawfish tank but it's going to be the CPO dwarf mexican variety.

I have some red claw crabs and a crayfish. When I feed them they'll jab at each other. (Nothing too serious). It's like watching a Godzilla movie.

Crayfish are so COOL, i have had Crayfish in a ten gallon tank with just a few small fishes, it did very well, make sure the lid is good because thy can climb out, I also had one in a 100 gallon tank with cichlid including a large Oscar, well the Crayfish was a badass, he had a few fights with the Oscar, and came off well using his two claws for defence, one day in an epic battle the Oscar won the fight, grabbing the Crayfish by the tail, it was over then, I Don't eat Crayfish because they abuse them in Louisiana so called Crawfish cook pot where they have hundreds of Crayfish munching on for such a small amount of meat

You can put any and all of your native plants in this tank to float and root as they will. They will add to the good bacteria to this tank.

The Crayfish really look great in the tank. 🦂 🦂🦂 🦂 I suspect this may be one of your favorite aquariums when fully completed. Was thinking about what plants would work well; maybe some larger Anubias? Good video. 📺👍😎

I have never gotten around to keeping crayfish. Eventually I guess.

Amazing setup 🐘

Live crayfish don't live in steral conditions... Ur pets won't be happy in a sterilized tank leave the fogginess alone and let the water do what it's supposed to it will balance itself out eventually as long as you have plenty of plants then you'll be fine

Beautiful

Water looks to cloudy or chlorinated. What are they gonna eat really in that?

New subscriber... This is great. I just cleaned and added native rocks to my aquarium for "Louis" (her friend "Thelma" didn't make it). Do have any tips on telling the age of an average river crayfish?

Don’t sterilize the rocks.

Also, i just recently got into crayfish, hence finding this vid. Mine is a marmorkrebs; the all-female self cloning ones

Dollar sunfish are cool they only get 4 to five inches and really pretty look them up

Me and my boy just caught 4 this weekend and we are building a habit for them. Your set up is cool, thanks for the ideas. One question, is what do you feed them and how often should we feed them?

How do you keep it clean? We have a few that really make a mess

Eventually there will only be 1. They kill each other in tanks.

Don't know so that's why I'm asking this...5 crayfish aren't going to be too many in that tank, esp. after they're grown? When all of them are full grown, won't that change the amount of hiding places? Just trying to learn. 👍😎

I’m not saying your wrong because technically your not! BUT have you ever tried catching the craws thinking they are going to retreat behind you but they actually do a very fast 180 and retreat backwards but in the original way they were facing? I went out craw dad fishing the other day and ran into that issue had a few get away from me was kinda annoying lol

Do we have to acclimate crayfish like we do fish or shrimps?

I have a blue crayfish, named Grut. Lately I’ve had trouble acclimating new fish to the tank and had a die off of neon tetras. Do crayfish add a ton to the bio load? Any advice? I’ve had Grut for 3 years, he promptly killed and tore up all live plants, kills any live plants I add. So no live plants, it’s a 40 gallon. Thank you

Looks great are you going to be putting any plants in ?

Painted nails? Gay/queer? Kids painted them? Or just comfortable with your own masculinity? Either way, love the color and glitter you chose 😉

What fish will you put in, or just crayfish?

Why is there no plants :(

Rosyside dace please

So when you do a native tank do you have to do the acid test on the rocks?

Nice black thumbnail

Nice. Do you have to have a license to collect local species?

Sculpin? Ur in cali huh? 😂

I did find native tanks get dirtier faster. Even a “Fishy” smell that the tank gets and u can’t get rid of it. Native fish make the native smell I suppose

Have you had any problems with them climbing out of your open topped tank?

Boring