I told my uncle the other day i'm slowly building a saltwater tank bit by bit, he's offering to get me a crayfish for my tank on one of his diving trips if I want one...

I think it would be awesome to have one in my tank but no idea if there is anything that you have to do while keeping them (e.g. the right food / water condition...)

Any one ever kept one or know of any one that has? :bounce:

he would only legally be able to bring you a cray that was bigger than the legal limit

you're gonna need a good size tank to keep a cray that big

yea I would make sure the cray is legal since my cuz works for MAF and wants to have a look at my tanks :lol: plus the same uncle also offered me a 500 liter tank so i hope that is big enough... if not no cray

they need good water parameters a lot of room and will eat anything in the tank

at least if it doesn't work out you can eat it

lot of room to accomodate the feelers

first sign of being under stress from bad water conditions is a widening of the gap between tail and body

there a guy up thames area who sell them. they where on trademe.

he frams them.as he cant reless back to the wild so he sell the babys.and maf improve.?/all he had was a five foot tank for five of them with some rocks for caves and feed them mussel.as for keep water at rigth salt mixure and water cold at 18 and below as they are more happen at lower temps.i whould get a chiller for the tank.as had two for three years but i did not have a chiller and cook them .hope that helps

jansens use to sell captive breed baby crays (and paua), bought one once

and it grew to legal size, and got eaten

I all ready have (for the most part) the gear for the saltwater tank.

Where abouts is 'Jansens' puttputt? (or is that some one on this forum?) cause if i can get a smaller cray or 2 that would be much easier to keep than an adult cray

i believe the guy who was doing them no l;onger does

We have one in the tank at the moment, and as livingart said....they will eat any and everything. They crush up mussels, scallops, snails basically anything with a shell will be crushed and eaten...damn strong.

They are pretty cool to watch, but inactive during the day, once the mainlights are out he's straight out looking for more trouble and occasionally swimming. You will need a fair bit of room and all the rockwork to be glued or stuck together somehow.

You will also need a decent skimmer as these fellas make a mess

They had a program on the discovery channel about one type of grouper that almost exclusively eats crays. A large one can get a hundred in a night.

have 2 in the rockpool at Work, you can buy them from fish-markets

Jansens closed its saltwater section a year or so ago.

ah ok, oh well I'll just wait till my uncle goes diving next and I'll get a cray off him. I'll just have to put the shellfish I was going to keep in the sump tank so the cray doesn't have an all you can eat dinner while i'm not looking.

Thanks for the pic Oceandose, gluing the rocks together... now why didn't I think of that lol