Are there saltwater crayfish

Lobsters, rock lobsters and crayfish may look similar and can be easily confused. Do you have the keys to distinguish them? Here are some photos of crustaceans. Would you be able to recognise each species? Lobster, rock lobster or freshwater crayfish? Photo into the public domain — Wikimedia. Image copyright WA Museum. Lobsters, crayfish and rock lobsters are all aquatic arthropods. Their external skeleton and segmented body classifies them into the group of crustaceans. Despite the fact they have very similar appearances, lobsters, rock lobsters and crayfish do not belong to the same family.

To understand their taxonomic differences, take a look at this classification. Moreover, there are three families of crayfish: Cambaridae , Astacidae , Parastacidae , also different from the two previous families.

Lobsters, rock lobsters and crayfish are not closely related. Common names are often confusing! Like prawns, shrimps and crabs, lobsters, rock lobsters and crayfish belong to the order Decapoda and have five pairs of legs on the main part of the body and five pairs of swimmerets. In lobsters and crayfish, the pair of legs closest to the head is differentiated into two claws. There are no claws in rock lobsters and that is the first major difference.

Lobsters have enormous, unequal and specialised claws which help them to defend themselves, attack, and catch prey. Their sharp cutter claw enables lobsters to tear their prey whereas the crusher claw, which is larger and dented, is used for crushing the food up.

Their two potent claws allow these predators to eat a lot of different prey such as small fish, sea urchins, crabs and sea stars. When lobsters lose a claw, a new one grows up with the next moult. However, if they lose a crusher claw, the most important one because it allows lobsters to access their food, the cutter claw transforms into a crusher claw and a cutter claw will grow up with the next moult.

Lobster in the wild. Lobsters have enormous, unequal and specialised claws. Devoid of claws, rock lobsters developed other arms to aide defence, such as sharp thorns all over their body and two horns on their head. Furthermore, when they feel endangered rock lobsters produce a loud defence screech rubbing one of their long antennae against a soft part of their carapace.

Hey guys, im at wmrk in my lfs now and i had the bright idea to see if freshwater crayfish could survive in a marine tank. It's been roughly an hour and hes still alive. Or is it likely that it would eventually die?

I believe that they are brackish water fish but im not too sure. Siddique , Feb 21, Joined: Dec 21, Messages: Location: tenessee. Well hours have passed and he's still going strong, eating and all It's an empty tank only the crawfish is in there by his lonesome. Joined: Aug 9, Messages: 1, There are a bunch in fully freshwater streams in the woods where I live.

Are you sure it is brackish and how do you know it would nuke the tank? Do they nuke fresh tanks if they die? Also, I wouldn't be surprised if the crayfish died in the long run. I would keep it QTd for a while before mixing it with other saltwater critters.

You can't ever be sure how it would react to a full marine environment. It might get killed right away. It might succumb to stress of a strange environment. It might prove to be a coral eater or at least taste some coral. I would be very cautious about ordering them for a marine tank until you've seen one survive in QT for a few weeks and especially if the nuking the tank thing turns out to be true.

LCP , Feb 21, Crayfish eat plants, insects, worms and just about anything else they can find on the muddy bottom they like to call home. Lobsters without claws, like spiny and rock lobsters, are often called crayfish, even though technically the term is incorrect. The most commonly used name might vary by region, but if it lives in saltwater, it's technically a lobster.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that crayfish are closer in appearance and relation to clawed lobsters than the version without claws, and that there are many other names used for crayfish. These include crawdad, crayfish, crays and even mud bugs or mud puppies.

There is also langostino, or squat lobster, which isn't really a lobster, but a crab with a body shaped like a lobster. With so much play in semantics, it can be difficult to know whether a menu option is truly clawed lobster, a spiny or rock lobster, crayfish or squat lobster, unless it is served whole or with the claws intact. The flavor of the different types is similar, except for squat lobster, which has both a texture and flavor that is closer to shrimp than lobster.