Crawdads- What to do about them?

[nyteyz]

I don't mind beer, so long as it is imported seriously though the only Aussie beer I'll drink is Crown Larger.

 

[DrCase]

Cold beer and hot spicy Crawdads right out of a beer flat sounds good

 

[BennyLava]

Yeah aussies have crawdads. I was watching survivorman and he was in the outback surviving on them. Not too bad a survival day for him. As for eating them to get rid of them... yeah I wouldn't mind doing that. But I was looking for a more permanent fix. They'll just be right back next year. Most likely cause I can't catch em all, and even if I could more would just get in. I'm sure yall all have them, it just your fish are too big to be bothered by them. I'm still growing my fish.

 

[Shdwdrgn]

It funny, you're trying to get rid of your crawdads, and I purposely introduced them to my pond... Of course that also gave me the chance to pick a specific kind. In my case, they have very small pinchers, so even when they were in our cichlid tank, they didn't do any damage to the fish.

For getting rid of them, I understand shellfish have a low tolerance to copper in the water. For a long-term solution, I wonder if it would be helpful to simply drop a bag of copper scraps in your filter? At the very least, it may help control any babies that get away from the fish.

 

[DoDad]

They say Copper is toxic to Koi.

 

[Shdwdrgn]

Ack! Bad plan then, pay no attention to my ramblings!

 

[BennyLava]

lol hopefully my fish can just learn to avoid them. I really don't think there is any way to keep them out of larger ponds, like 9000 gallons and such. Mines only 2000 gallons though.

 

[mikeinpgh]

Would a turtle eat them??:lol:

 

[NichrfUNLV]

See if anyone you know has a big red eared slider (8 inches plus)

They will devour them all within days.

Watch out for the fish though. My RES dont touch the fish but will eat anything else that moves- I live in AZ and have had small lizards come to my pond to drink and the turtles would go after them (however the lizards are much too fast).

 

[NichrfUNLV]

Ive also had my RES uproot plants in my bog section going for snails

 

[oldmarine]

Bennylava, have you concidered putting stink bait (a rotting fish head), in a crab pot, and putting it in your pond? Do it regularly, and you can make a crayfish bumbo. If nothing else you would be albe to keep your crayfish population down.:lol:

 

[DrDave]

Innovation, I love it. Great idea!

 

[oldmarine]

Boil them up, and they are great eat'n with cocktail sauce. They are fresh water shrimp.

I lived in near San Jose, CA in Cupertino, and had a Gunnery St. that lived on the Sacramento golf course. Gunny Hall would crab pot them out of the Sacramento river by the buckets. He gave me all I could eat.

 

[j.w]

Yum, you got my mouth watering right now for a whole bucket of them. I'd dip mine in nice hot melted butter................yee haw

 

[BennyLava]

Bennylava, have you concidered putting stink bait (a rotting fish head), in a crab pot, and putting it in your pond? Do it regularly, and you can make a crayfish bumbo. If nothing else you would be albe to keep your crayfish population down.:lol:

There we go. Can't believe I didn't think of that. You know I think they even sell crawdad traps in those bass fishing magazines. (people use em as bass bait) You stick some bait in like you mentioned, and the crawdads go in but they can't get back out.

I'm not surprised that they showed up in my pond though. Even though my pond is probly... at least 1000 yards away from the nearest body of water. There is a stock tank (stocked with largemouth bass, crappie, catfish, perch and minnows) waaay back behind my house. Crawdads can get anywhere and everywhere. Once I was digging a hole out in the middle of nowhere (to burry a dog) and there was no water that I knew of for miles around. I dug up a living crawdad. Don't know how he was living, or how he got there but he seemed to be just fine.