We all make mistakes. I appreciate you deciding to share it with us - even if it meant leaving yourself open to unfortunate criticism. You could have not talked about it at all, but instead turned it in to a teachable moment for your viewers. Props to you Aquapros! Thank you hor being honest enough to share your failures, as well as successes. By the way... that is still the coolest, most creative tank on RU-vid!
Yeah Aquapros! We're not perfect. Try keeping a 3 inch pair of cichlids with a foot long arowana. The male survived, the female went down the hatch. :..( Also, the male was already dead when the shrimp found him. You should probably make the avatar tank more hardy for a quicker recovery.
Guys, rather than hide the fact that I messed up on this one, I decided to share with you. Sometimes information online conflicts and you're left not knowing ALL the information required to care for a particular species. Pair that with a new experience and you're bound to have some struggles. The longer you keep fish, the easier it becomes to shrug off the fine print, in this case, it cost me. YES I should have spent longer researching the preferred crayfish environment, but again, sometimes a few google searches and a few forum reads isn't enough. Like I said, I hope this video series shows you that taking your time, being patient and asking a lot of questions is always the best route when keeping new organisms. That was the whole point. I am NOT an expert in all things aquarium related, nor will I ever be. Everyones got an opinion on this one, I totally get that- If I didn't want to hear criticism, I wouldn't put this on the internet, lol. Thanks to those that understand why I chose to show this series. NEVER STOP LEARNING and having fun ;) -Mike
Hey Aquapros, I had a lot of deaths with the CPO crayfish until I was taught that their brown counterparts come from a lake in Mexico that the water is very hard (30-40 GH) and the pH very high (8.9-9). I used African cichlid buffer and substrate as well as adding baking soda and salt to my water. Now they breed like crazy.
You are a true scientist. We have all learned from your willingness to discuss your failure. I am planning to eventually purchase some of these to try to breed and as a senior can not afford to many costly mistakes. I gain valuable knowledge of possible pitfalls that I will need to avoid. Keep us posted on your progress with these Crayfish.
thanks for the video! It sucks but don't give up. I have a crayfish all by himself in a tank, sometime ago he as not active at all, hiding, not eating, I searched the internet and I figured I didn't have water hard enough. I didn't do anything about the water or substrate, but I am giving it a Tums tablet (yes, that antacid you take for heart burn) every week. Have been doing it for almost a year already, the crayfish is active, not hiding, eat like crazy, it looks really happy, even escaped the tank once, I found it 15 feet away on the floor, scared my daughter, she thought it was a huge roach. I don't know if giving them Tums is 100% correct, it is very cheap and it worked really well for me, I saw this tip on one of Aquarium Coop's videos.
calcium rich food for crustaceans can eliminate these problems. squid bone (the one used for parrots) works great. grind it and make your own food, or you can give it to them straight to pick on. it floats so you will have to anchor it.
This is super late but for anyone who may read this, a cool alternative would be neocaridina shrimp with those Crayfish. I'm not sure if they're behaviorally compatible but they like the same water.
I'm sure lots of people are hating on you and bashing you for "not doing research"... everyone has fucked up in this hobby. I have.. multiple times. Everyone who bashes you has... Something these new people don't realize is that you have been a fishkeeper for how long? years? a long time basically. long time fishkeepers overlook "the fine print" like you said... I personally don't even test water params anymore. Never had problems.
Well that's unfortunate that you didn't realize that. If your tank is very soft water I question whether those neocardina will do too well either, once they start to molt at least. Interesting that it brought the hardness down that much, I have a small tank with that substrate and it hasn't made too much if an impact. Granted my water is normally extremely hard.
Ah it sucks when we misses out this even if we did studies for them earlier. When we get what we want sometimes we just get excited and kinda forgets stuff.
I'm new to aquascaping/fish keeping and the reason i enjoy your channel more so than others is because you share the mistakes along with the successes.
Yeah, I got my setup some calcium stones. Toss one or two in and the crays will nibble on it while they dissolve. Usually about a week. Then just plop a couple more in.
A lot of people bashing you, really shouldn't. They say you should do more research, but I really tried doing a lot of research before getting my red claw crayfish and people need to understand that there is little to no information on keeping crayfish at all, because they are only really increasing in popularity now along with shrimp. The best way of explaining it is like they are the new "betta fish". People think they are cool and unique, but there are still a lot of myths involved with keeping them that many people believe with all of their being. I found that mine aren't too bad to care for and they have only ever been healthy. But if they do get sick, there is literally no info on illnesses, etc.
just a heads up everybody, shrimp also prefer harder water to molt, Especially the large bamboo shrimp. Pretty much if it molts, give it a PH supplement.
I thought this was going to be worse than it was. I wouldn't worry about losing babies at all. It can be hard to raise baby anything in the hobby, and everyone kills stuff in their aquariums. Sometimes that's what it takes to learn. At least you still have the female og.
Personally, I would've place a sunken cuttlefish bone/crushed coral in there for the crayfish and shrimp to nom on and get some calcium. I've got no clue if it actually works, but it might've worked for you.
Thanks for sharing man. I just bought a couple of crayfish but locally I have supwr hard water. Just trying to set up platns in order to do not build nitrates in this tanks. Take care
your avatar tank is my favorite fish tank very unique. part of the reason why i liked it is because the crayfish were kind of like a predator to keep the shrimp in check. is there another part time predator you could put in the shrimp tank that would be able to survive this water like a crab or something? love the videos keep it up. subscribed
CPOs are tricky, I've never been successful with them over a long term. OTOH, I've had lots of success with their non-orange cousins, (same species, with natural coloring) even in the same tanks that I tried to raise the orange ones in. And try some calcium tablets. My crustaceans and snails love them. I get mine from ebay, they are made from crushed oyster shells.
glad you were honest about what happened, maybe we can learn from this my local store has these fellas in, I am pondering them pretty hard and thus doing some reading and watching
Does your crayfish doesnt eat the plants in your tank? Can you enlighten me with that. I read few things regarding crayfish and it says they eat plants in the tank.
Owww thank you for this video. I have a dwarf crayfish also and last night i changed his water tank. He seems to be active after the water change. And few minutes it was laying backwards. I believe he will molt since i put a strong aerator for the tank
Man it's a shame but stuff happens. Many years ago I tried keeping clown loaches... After 3 times of trying and failing with no suggestions from my local fish store I gave up. One day when I get back into the hobby I know more now and will try again.
Thats sucks but we all blow it sometimes so you won't get a scolding from me! I've raised crayfish a time or too and as a standard practice I found wondershells to be very beneficial to them and it helps to balance the redox as well.
I'm so sorry this happened! I'm glad you could save the mom, and hopefully somewhere down the road you'll get her a new boyfriend :) One quick little question, what is the light green spikey plant in the bottom right corner?
I understand that everyone makes mistakes no matter how long they've been in the hobby, but the dead male crayfish should have been the warning sign. As soon as he passed you should have looked into what could have been the causes and determine if any of the ones that you can control were the problem, then have done everything possible to fix it(within your means of course). I know that it hasn't been a very long time span to work with, but you might have been able to save at least some of the babies. If research into the father's passing didn't turn up anything then, we'll then there was no fixing it in time. At the very least, this served as a learning experience. Nonetheless, I hope Mama Crayfish does well in her new tank with her future mate.
8.0 to 8.2 is too hard but mine are breeding out of control at 7.5. I had no luck with my crays without fluval to bring down my crazy alkaline water. I had to rebuild the tank with fluval and now my crays are going nuts! So it doesnt surprise me they dont like the acidic water either. Mid 7’s is perfect. I had to add danios to my tank to try to control these cray populations now. They breed faster then shrimp with a turn around time of exactly 23 days from berry to release...😱 Love that tank though! Its beautiful!
This is why its such a good hobbby. Everyone makes mistakes. If you are wise, you learn from it, if you are brave to boot, you share it with others. So props for sharing it so that others can learn from it. Its the same with orchids and such. For an example, I've learned that I shouldnt care for Zygopetalum orchids. Murderous instincts are hard to resist, and I'd like to avoid brutally murdering a third Zygo. ;)
I think the avatar tank is stocked enough, those cherry/neo shrimp are going to be prolific in their spawning. I have a 5.5G heavily planted tank with 6 tiny ember tetra and a couple assorted neo shrimp (5 or 6)- there are around 20 shrimp now and so many of the females have eggs. I need to get my 20G set up and get those tetras out and leave it to the shrimp... but for now it is still the cleanest, most settled and self sufficient set up I have ever run in that tank over the last 5 years. These things happen. I killed all my crystal bee shrimp, and then my first round of cherry shrimp died out when I tried to keep them in a 3.5G nano with internal filter. It just was impossible for me to keep stable enough for fragile bee shrimp, not sure why the cherry shrimp died after their first spawn though.
Why were you rocking back and forth o-0 I knew the second you said that there would be crayfish in this setup, that it would fail. I would make it simply a awesome shrimp setup! Get some more fancy blues n such or something
ervin orellana No. Research and learn before you buy. That's how it is. Buying fish and killing them is not how someone should advance in the fish keeping hobby.
how do you think that research came to be? trial and error. it's a big part of the aquarium hobby, like it or not. you can research til your face turns blue and still have everything blow up in your face.
