crayfish gnawing on plastic plants

[Levi]

my crayfish has been amusing himself by gnawing on his plastic aquarium plants

at first, he would try and cut them down at the bottom with his claw, (natural food-gathering type behavior for crayfish) and i thought it was cute... "awwwww, he's trying to harvest the fake plant"

but now he climbs them and gnaws endlessly at the leaves

i wouldn't be concerned, but on examining the plastic leaves, i found he's actually making progress with it, and the leaves are starting to become mangled around the edges

i'm afraid he'll finally get a piece of it off and swallow it


i think i'll have to remove the plants altogether and give him some tougher decor

[Dave66]

He's after the biofilm and algae cells on the leaves, Levi. Crawdads are natural grazers like that.

Dave

[Levi]

that's what i thought at first, because crays are known to scrape algae, but he really bears down on the plastic and is mangling it

it doesn't look like scraping behavior, it looks like "why is this plant so darn chewy" behavior

[Levi]

wow

i ended up taking the plants out

i looked really closely at them and they are really chewed up

he may have ingested some plastic :(

[Levi]

you are probably right about why he is doing it

they are probably all slimy and tasty with microbes