What Do Crawfish Eat
What Do Crawfish Eat Most Often?
If you are trying to keep crawfish as pets, you might want to know what do crawfish eat and what keeps them healthy and happy. Crawfish resemble a smaller type of lobster and they are related to them. They are freshwater crustaceans and they breathe through gills. They can be found in rivers and small streams and they prefer to live in running, fresh water. Crawfish are a brown to a red brown color and they have pinchers on each of the front legs. When crawfish are kept as pets; they like to hide under rocks and plants because they are shy animals. But they will show themselves when you feed them. The first thing you will need to learn is, what do crawfish eat and how much food you should feed them.
Crawfish can be kept in a fresh water aquarium. But there are a few things you can do to keep them comfortable. Since they love to hide, you should place plenty of rocks and plastic plants in the tank area. It might not be a good idea to place live plants in the aquarium with the crawfish. They will attempt to eat just about anything that lives in the tank and this includes live plants and fish. Occasionally, certain types of fish sink to the bottom of the tank and rest during the nighttime hours. The crawfish may see this as an opportunity for a quick snack and eat the drowsy fish. Be sure to find out if the fish you already have in your tank, are compatible with the crawfish. So when you ask yourself, what do crawfish eat, the answer is just about anything. But you will want to find out what is a healthy choice, when it comes to food types.
A favorite food for the crawfish is soft, decaying plant matter. This includes lettuce and spinach leaves, that are about to go bad. If you cut these leaves into tiny pieces, the crawfish will gobble them down in no time. In the wild, they consume dead fish carcasses and fish eggs but you can give them shrimp pellets or gold fish food to mimic the taste of fish. Algae wafers can be another good choice but if you want the crawfish to get the proper nutrition, you should give it pellet formed fish or turtle food. You can give them decayed plants as a special treat but make sure that they always have a source of nutrients in the tank.
Many people purchase tinnier fish like guppies or minnows, for the crawfish to eat. This is fine for a fresh water tank with other crawfish but if you have other types of fish that occupy the tank, the crawfish can start to think that they are all a meal. This can turn out to be a bad habit and you might even lose those expensive smaller fish you have spent money on. To avoid this, you can place the crawfish in their own tank and keep them separated from the other fish. If you have a fish that has died recently, you can feed that to the crawfish as a special treat.
Another thing that comes to mind when asking what do crawfish eat is, that they can and do eat each other. If the creatures are left for even a short while without any type of food, they will resort to cannibalism and attempt to eat other crawfish. This is why turtle or fish pellets can be a good choice for food. These pellets sink to the bottom of the tank and can be easily found by the crawfish. This way, even if they do not have a special snack or any type of plant life to eat, they will still have the pellets to keep them full.