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freshwater crays


jayci

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The Koura rules are weird.

it seems you can collect from the wild but can't transport live specimens, so I guess kill em' and eat em' applies here.

If you have a farming license you can sell also sell them. the ones in the shop are farm bred, and you can get a notice to confirm that when you buy, so there should be no hassles, unless by chance you start breeding them in plague prportions for your local restaurant. another case of DOC and MAF not keeping up with each other.

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Yay! Someone else discovering our native aquatic animals! Crays are great fun. Do a search, there are several threads about them here.

In the wild they are 95% vegetarian, and largely feed off 'allocthonic detritus", basically stuff that falls into the stream. Mine adore frozen peas and go nuts for the bloodworm I feed my native fish. Try him with a variety of veges, mine have also liked cucumber, green beans and corn. Keep a little pot of things in the freezer for convenience. Some can be picky, you will soon work out what they like.

Make sure there are lot of hiding places. Stack up rocks to make caves. Crays are very timid (the 'mini-tank' look is defensive, not aggressive). However they will happily eat fish if they can grab them (thankfully their eyesight is not good), so if you have fish with him be careful with sizes.

They are good escape artists, can climb and swim with sharp tail-kicks. Make sure you have a really good lid!

Legality: there is a lot of myth and confusion. I pestered lots of various DoC staff and others and eventually came up with the following *rough* guide:

you can take native fish (and crays) for aquaria, but may not move them to a different waterway without permits. You may not take native fish or koura from the Lake Taupo area unless you are part of a certain iwi. You may not take them from reserves or conservation land.

Stella

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