Monday afternoon Ted and I hauled off ten of our beloved crayddlers to their new home.
Of course, it was tough.
I cradled them the whole 45 minute car ride, then stayed in the car, bawling, because I couldn’t bear to walk inside with Ted and give them up. I’m a real pansy when it comes to letting go of pets. It’s tough.
It took well over a half hour to catch and package the little devils. You’d think with sixteen porkchops swimming around that the net wouldn’t have a hard time ensnaring one or two. Ohhhhhhhhhh, but they knew. They’re insanely fast backwards swimmers to begin with, and even though this was the first they’ve ever seen of the dreaded long-handled green net in their short lives, they instinctively knew that it meant trouble. Magically, the instant that net found its way into the tank, we went from sixteen visible crays to zero. They barricaded themselves in plants, on plants, under plants, under gravel, atop heaters and air hoses, between crevices, and under the rock until we eventually had to empty out the tank of every single decoration aside from the gravel and water itself. Even then, they were still difficult to capture – whizzing up and down and backwards and forwards and every such direction to avoid the net. When one was finally caught we filled a quart-sized freezer bag with about a cup of tank water, released the squirming and utterly terrified crayddler in, tried to swish as much oxygen in as possible, and sealed up the bag and placed it in a storage tub. Rinse and repeat.
We had grand plans of observing the crays for a few hours first to find the bullies, and pickers, and the menacing ones to relocate first. We partially succeeded, but ultimately ended up just catching whoever we could catch. We purposely tried to keep anyone who was little, shy, or missing one or many appendages (5 of the 6 keepers currently are). We figured that with the bullies out of the tank these little guys will stand a great shot at regenerating their missing body parts, getting more food to eat, having more room to grow and run, and less troublemakers around so they’ll feel safe molting and growing. It also means we gave up some of our biggest, brightest, bluest crays, but with confidence that these sweet little guys we have left will now be able to grow up to be big, bright, healthy, happy, and outgoing crays.
In all the chaos of catching crays and removing plants to catch said crays, we were able to get our first really solid tank cleaning in since they were born, which though traumatizing as it happens, feels wonderful now we’re sure, and their tank looks great!
So, then there were six.
Naturally I miss the other ten, but the six we have in our care are so pretty and sweet and the fighting has decreased exponentially!
Pics to come later ;)
Happy 4th!! We’ll be spending the day together, cooking out, eating, relaxing, enjoying the great outdoors, and hopefully playing with some fireworks. Hope your 4th is just as festive and relaxing! God Bless America!
Lara,
I so love this post! We had a crayfish that Allison raised from her third grade class but died last year on its own. Tim was in charge of cleaning the smelly small tank each week. The crayfish would have all freedom in the bathtub while he cleaned the gravel and changed the water. He was cute though and we surely do miss him greatly. With that said though, we are not getting another crayfish. I am wondering why you are raising crayfish. What made you get them in the first place?
Happy 4th of July!!!
Mary
Thanks, Mary! I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog! Sorry for the loss of Allison’s cray…that’s really tough! We sort of stumbling into crayfish rearing by accident. We came upon Maverick at the local fish shop and instantly fell in love with her, thinking she was about the coolest, most entertaining thing we’d ever seen, and she was BLUE. We just kind of took an educated guess that she might be a female and certainly didn’t know that she was pregnant though (didn’t berry until we’ve had her for a full month). We had her for two months and loved her to pieces. But she was dealing with poor water conditions while we tried to cycle her tank (newbies, you live and learn), a case of shell rot that prevented her from molting, and her eggs developed a fungal infection, which is said to be common in Mamma Crays, but her eggs hatched right around the time she died and we found ourselves with sixteen little ones to remember her by. They’ve grown up so well! But now that we have them, we think they’re great! We love them, and I can’t believe I didn’t know about them as pets (I only thought of them as food before, and now I don’t know if I can bring myself to eat one) until a few months ago. Hope you guys are doing well!