How to keep crayfish at home? A detailed guide to home breeding methods
Crayfish can be not only used as food, but also kept at home for viewing. Nowadays quite a few people keep crayfish at home. So how do you keep crayfish at home? Let's take a look.
1. Container
To keep crayfish, you can use a plastic basin, a storage box, an acrylic or glass fish tank, etc. Note that the height of the container should not be less than the body length of the crayfish, to prevent them from escaping.
2. Environment
If you have a filtration system, you can set it up as a simulated natural environment, placing tree roots, bamboo tubes, etc. for them to climb, and planting plants such as water hyacinth and Hydrilla verticillata for them to hide, rest and feed on, with the water depth reaching 0.5 m. Without a filtration system, it is recommended to keep them in a bare tank with a small amount of plants. The water depth should preferably be 3-5 cm; when the water quality deteriorates, change the water in time.
3. Number
If the stocking density of crayfish is too high, it is easy to cause hypoxia, fighting and mutilation. For home keeping, adult crayfish should be at most one per square decimeter, and too many males can also easily cause fighting, so the best male-to-female ratio is 3:1.
4. Feeding
Crayfish are omnivorous; they like eating animal-based bait such as fresh miscellaneous fish, and also like eating plant-based bait such as soybeans, soybean cake, corn, fruit and tender aquatic plants. For home keeping, you can feed them fish meat, snail meat, shrimp meat, watermelon, steamed buns, etc. Under the condition of ensuring quality, the daily feeding amount should generally be based on eating full, finishing the food, and leaving no residual bait. From July to October, the water temperature is suitable, and it is the growing season for the shrimp, so feed 2 times a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. In the other seasons, feed once a day. Because crayfish mainly eat at night, the amount fed at night accounts for 70%-80% of the whole day's bait. Feed more when the weather is clear and fine, and feed less during high temperature and muggy weather, continuous rainy days, or when the water is too dense; feed less when a large number of shrimp are molting, and feed more after molting.
Keeping crayfish at home is relatively simple; you just need to pay attention to the breeding density and change the water in time, and they grow relatively fast.