Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Crawfish for LMB Forage?

The best way to keep them alive (though this may not be as feasable with larger quantities) is to put a bag or two of ice in an ice chest, then use a couple of wooden slats, then put the bags of crawfish on top of the wood. The key thing is to keep the crawfish cool and moist but do NOT let them get wet. This keeps them inactive and prevents them from killing each other trying to get out of the sack.

On a slightly related note, you can always spot a fellow coonass in front of a pile of bright red boiled crawfish by saying, "Don't eat the dead ones." If he doesn't look perplexed, he's a coonass.

The source I am checking for Crawfish is: http://www.texascrawfish.com/.
They say they are not large enough to sell, yet. Darn Katrina and Rita!

I just bought 170 to 200 Ghost/Glass/Grass Shrimp. We'll se if Ic an get a population started in the 78 Xmas trees I sunk. I found 4 sites that sell them, but the first site had the best price, overall. We'll see how it goes.
http://liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=1468
http://www.livebrineshrimp.com/
http://store.yahoo.com/fish2u/scgs.html
http://www.aquatic-store.com/en-us/dept_307.html

bigmac - your grrass shrimp will do best and thrive if there are beds of vegetation growing in the pond. The more vegetation that you have the better the grass shrimp will thrive.

good info, bigmac. I've been looking for a source. Unless I am not reading it correctly, the 1st site cost is $30.00 for 85-100, and the brineshrimp site is $12.00 for 100. Maybe the shipping cost difference makes the 1st one cheaper?

Aww, about half the Xmas trees are sunk, vertical, but come within a foot of the surface. After 3 weeks, the tops are totally covered with algae.

The other half of the Xmas trees are in about two foot of water, next to a large grass bed, laid horizontally, with open gaps in strategic areas of the pile. I've already counted lots of little Blue Gills in these sheltered open areas. I think they are migrating from the more confined space of the grass bed. There are also two more large grass beds, that I plan to 'seed' with the grass shrimp.

On pricing: Yes, overall. Liveaquaria also answered the phone and answered my additonal questions about which subspecies they sold. There's two, but I can't spell them and have to go back to work, so don't have time to copy the names in this post, at this time.

Burgermeister, you're right!
http://www.livebrineshrimp.com/ is the lowest price, including shipping, at this time.

I think crawfish are a little over rated as forage. One tends to get a vision of great numbers of them walking along the pond bottom, and bass feeding on them. This isn't the way it works. Crawfish immediately dig in where they's safe from predation. They are highly territorial. They venture out of their hole warily, but get a little careless during the spawn. Most forage will be from the numerous young that haven't found a territory.

Having said that, crawfish can still make up an important part of a diverse forage base, even if eaten in relitavely small numbers.

I think crawfish are a little over rated as forage. One tends to get a vision of great numbers of them walking along the pond bottom, and bass feeding on them. This isn't the way it works. Crawfish immediately dig in where they's safe from predation. They are highly territorial. They venture out of their hole warily, but get a little careless during the spawn. Most forage will be from the numerous young that haven't found a territory.

Having said that, crawfish can still make up an important part of a diverse forage base, even if eaten in relitavely small numbers.

bobad, that makes sense. Since my ponds are small, I also like the idea of having a supply of Crawfish I can trap to hit the larger lakes in the area. They make great trotline bait.

I find that as bass numbers increase, crawdad numbers decrease. I think I would rather have a good forage pond for them so I could keep resupplying the main ponds.

I live in Indiana and recntly purchased a house with a pond and some springs on it. I am looking to stock the pond with crayfish/crawdads/mudbugs. Where can I get some of these and what would be a fair price.?

Cheapest price I have found is about $6-8 for a trap ar Wal-Mart and a couple bucs for some cheap dog food They are very easy to trap, the only problem is the potential to carry disease to your pond. I wash any and all that I catch in water from the pond before I transplant them. Also, it can be rather time consuming to go through and identify every one you catch, just to make sure you don't get a non-target species, like the Rusty, in with the bunch. Lots of labor, saves on money. There is a link above where you can have some shipped to you. A little pricey, but saves you the trouble of the above activities. Otherwise, call around to fish farms near you and see if they can get them for you.