Crayfish is depressed

[LeilaNami]

Hi all! I'm having some crayfish issues.

I've had a crayfish of unknown species for the past 7 months. I retrieved him from the feeder tank at the PetSmart I worked at. Well I had put in a female of the same species. At the time I didn't know she was the same species and immediately Sir George grabbed her and started mating. He ended up accidentally killing her by punching a hole through her side during a vigorous attempt. I separated her after that but she died. Since then (and it has been 3 or 4 months) he has been acting depressed. He used to beg me for food every time I approached his tank and he used to wander around all hours of the day. Now, I can barely get him to respond to my presence. Today he had a really bad molt and lost both of his big, blue, beautiful chelipeds. He otherwise seems intact. I'm very worried about him and I don't know what to do. I love him and I've raised him from an itty bitty little thing to the beast he is today.

[sebastien]

more females??

[LeilaNami]

It's 10 gallon and so while it could support the bioload when they were smaller, he's too large to be able to add another cray to this tank.

[sebastien]

HMMM...some ghosts for him to chase around?

[jaysee]

Welcome to the forum!

Crayfish are best kept alone, especially in small tanks. The smallest tank I would attempt 2 is a 55.

I think adding ghost shrimp is a good idea in general. It's good for the cray's shell. Adding snails such as MTS is a great option. Crays love to dig through the sand, and this way they will dig and re-arrainge the tank as they hunt down and eat the snails. My cray tanks are the only ones without MTS in them.

[Northernguy]

Welcome to the Fabulous AC!:22:

How long have had the cray?
How large is it now?
I am wondering because it is strange for them to lose their claws like that.

[Lady Hobbs]

Perhaps he doesn't move about much because he has no room to move about? He should probably have a tank a bit larger now with rocks for caves and wood for hiding areas. Do you have lots of oxygen in his tank because they need a lot of that.

[LeilaNami]

Thanks for the welcome!

I've had this since October 09 (so it's actually been more like 9-10 months rather than 7). He started out around 1.5" body length and is now around 5" body length. He was doing perfectly fine around this size in the 10 gallon so I do not think the tank size is the problem and there is a 20 gallon filter on it not mention we keep it clean. He's got plenty of things to climb on and bulldoze. There is a large piece of driftwood in there. I do have some ramshorn snails that I have been letting propagate in a 2 gallon. I really don't want to add ghost shrimp due to the last batch being added broke out in a fungus and I had to fish them all out.

When he molted, he had dropped one claw already and was struggling with the second which looked to be in the same situation as the one he dropped. He couldn't move so I fished him out gently with a tupperware dish and intended to help his molt (I do this with my tarantulas if they have the rare issue of being stuck in a molt so I'm not new to helping them along). I had left him be for a few hours to make sure that he was stuck. Well, he was very stuck. When I fished him out, he dropped the second claw. Both chelipeds had split only half way and I can see where the newer, soft exo was trying to emerge but was stuck inside the old exo. He seems traumatized now and won't come out of his cave or respond well to food. It's only been a day and a half since so I'm trying not worry.