I'd like to have lots of both, but I've heard crays are prone to snipping the stem connecting the pad to the rhizome. Are they too destructive to justify buying fancy lilies for a pond with them in it?

In my experience a pond with a decent or balanced population of bass will rarely have enough crayfish to be destructive to water lilies. What is the estimate or samples reveal about the bass population?

I have too many crawdads in my pond and have had very little success with planting plants in my pond not to mention pretty muddy waters. I want to try some lilies this year and will be hanging them in special-made 5 gallon buckets due to the fear of the lilies becoming expensive crawfood. I tried this last year with American Pondweed and it worked very well. I hung a couple bucketfuls off my dock where the top of the bucket was about a foot under the water surface. This was done in 7 foot of water so the crawdads would have a hard time getting at them. They thrived all summer long and we'll see if they come back this spring. They should.

I hope to bucket grow the lilies and eventually propagate/transplant them to pots for putting closer to the shoreline.

Here's a quick link to my hanging basket thread...

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=39125&Number=509025#Post509025

Not shown in the other thread is a swing arm that I cobbled up to hang the buckets out away from the dock.

The only native plants that I have in the pond that survive alongside the craws are...

Pickerel Weed,
Arrow Head/Duck Potato,
and Thalia dealbata.

I do not have but one LMB in my pond. I put it in to help reduce craw numbers for what is was worth and my decent population of HSB have not proven to control them even at 2 pound each or better.

I have though about using half of a 15 gallon barrel, potting the lilies in that, and setting it on the pond bottom...thinking that the craws would not be able get up into it on a regular occasion. This experiment may come next year if this year's hang lilies prosper. This thought process my not allow for ALOT of lilies in my pond, but a think a few would be better than none at all.

We staked chicken wire cages around a lotus planted in the pond bottom. It does require sinking the bottom of the wire below the pond bottom.

RAH, you have what I would call the "example" of what all ponds should have around them for aquatics..

Thank you very much for the compliment.

This is all hypothetical at this point. I'm in the planning stage of pond ownership.

Yikes. I wonder how the crays are managing to withstand predation from your bass. Do you feed your fish? Maybe the crayfish are sustaining a high population on leftover food.

Easy answer to "I wonder how the crays are managing to withstand predation from your bass." Quarteracre only has ONE bass at this time since he said "I do not have but one LMB in my pond." Depending on what type of other forage fish that are in his pond his one bass could be eating other easy to catch and and more tasty foods rather than crayfish. A normal LMbass population will put a "serious hurt" on a crayfish population to the point of only a few crayfish survive unless the habitat is very conducive or favorable to crayfish survival which is a rare occurrence.

In my 1 acre pond (full of LMB and crayfish) the only way I managed to make water lilies survive, after 4 years of trying, was to transplant very large and vigorous rhizomes that I had grown in my small aesthetic pond. I had to put many at the same time, so that they sprouted simultaneously, abundantly and vigorously, with many immediately large stems. Once they are rooted and started, they are no longer afraid of crayfish, but only of nutrias.

To be clear...I overstocked the craws prior and during my fist year of stocking HSB and HBG. I was having alot of fun in the creek trapping, netting them, and transplanting them...I could not stop myself.

I thought the 40 HSB that I stocked would put the hammer on them right out of the gate, but my theory is that many of the craws outgrew the mouth gape of the HSB and are still there. I do not see many small craws so I think they are providing food for all the fish and IF the HSB have a taste for them...the craw population will soon be diminishing as they should exceed 3 pounds this year. I did trap out over 150 last year...they were all about 4 inches long with the occasional 3 incher...nothing smaller hence my theory that the youth are being eaten and my overabundance of craws are original adults.

I do enjoy feeding the craws, however, and they likely get alot of leftovers from the fish being fed.

https://www.usbr.gov/lc/phoenix/biology/azfish/pdf/CrayfishFinal.pdf

Dang IT RAH!...I though I could ramble about crawdads. Mr. Hyatt there, on the other hand, can go on and on and on...and he must have something horrible against them...LOL

Good document! saved for my collection of "all things POND".

RAH, thanks for posting the link. Plenty of interesting stuff in there.

You are very welcome. This is a great place to share resources.

At year one and two (last spring), each, I've tossed in six pounds of Louisiana Red crawdads, in a tenth acre for a bass and catfish treat. My two water lilies planted in containers (plastic lined pond) at day 1, miniature varieties from Home Depot or Lowes, still dormant when adding crawdads, did great regardless. I still see one occasionally that crawls into a fish trap or my fish holding box.