# Crayfish Destroying All Of My Plants



## ianeberle (Aug 11, 2012)

I recently bought a crayfish for my freshwater tank. He's about 3 inches long and is a really cool edition to my community. The only problem I have with him is that he completely ate three of my plants (leaves, roots, and all) and has almost destroyed the remaining two, which are giant java ferns. In fact, he ate the roots that were several inches long off of one of my java ferns, so I don't even know if it's going to be growing back (I found it floating at the top of the tank).

I don't want to get rid of my crayfish and I don't want to get rid of my live plants (simply because they look pretty and provide benefits for my fish). Is there any special kind of crayfish food or algae pellets or something that I can buy to calm his appetite?


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## beaslbob (May 29, 2009)

Basically the best thing to do is seperate the crayfish from the plants. You could partition the tank. Or set up another tank and pump water between the two.

Animals eating the plant life is very very common on marine tank where refugiums with macroalgae are very common.

my .02


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## WhiteGloveAquatics (Sep 3, 2009)

Craws love their vegetation,


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## FishFlow (Sep 13, 2011)

Crawfish only tank. I had issues keeping shrimp alive in my community tanks, my solution was to create a shrimp only tank. I love my 10 gallon shrimp tank!


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## Aeten (Aug 4, 2012)

I'd get different plants, experiment and see which species crawdad won't destroy. Some of my fish apparently have the same behavior, yet they leave my amazon sword totally alone and only nip at my java moss.


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## ianeberle (Aug 11, 2012)

Thanks for all of the advice, but I ended up returning my crayfish to the pet store. He was really cool, but way too much of a hassle and caused too much damage.


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## holly12 (Apr 21, 2011)

^ I was going to say, once he's done with the plants, he may go for the fish... they hunt at night and tend to snag the fish whilst they are sleeping. They are really cool animals to have, but are hard to keep in community tanks. Not impossible - some people are able to do it - but most often it doesn't work.


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