Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait feeding crawfish

I now have crawfish in my tilapia pond. I lowered the level to catch the tilapia and there were lots of half grown crawfish. Do they take two years to reach "eatin' size" and what can I feed them to help them grow?

See this

http://srac.tamu.edu/tmppdfs/1239413-241...068d4d491f1292a

Mostly, they eat dead tilapia.

Most fish feed suppliers in the South also have crawfish rations.
I believe Purina does, and I know Cargill does. To feed crawfish naturally, you have to really know what you're doing to keep them fed thruout the year.

They must eat live tilapia too. They must have raided the nests or attacked the small ones because I had way fewer tilapia than previous years.

I did an experiment on a baby crawdad for just that reason. It was less than 1/2 inch and cute when I caught it. I put it in my home aquarium and all was fine at first. Pretty soon I noticed some sculpin missing. Then a cory, then one of my koi had it's entire tail eaten. Although it's claws were still small it's tail was big enough to eat after less than six months. I threw the damn thing out after that in one of my outside lily tanks. Now I have a tailess koi and no more sculpins.

I catch a lot of them and the best bait is dogfood. We just punch a bunch of holes in a can of Old Roy and they swarm it the traps. Any meat, or leftover fish carcass they will pick it clean. Unless I wanted to farm them I would not feed them anything but leftover scraps. I wouldn't want them with live fish either as they stress the hell out of them. They are delicacies in many parts of the world and ours get exported to Norway. Bust one open and suck that head.

Bacon.... they like bacon....used to catch bunches of them on it when I was a kid.