CRAWDADS AND THE PHOENIX POND

​Crawdads. Crayfish. Crawfish. Mud bugs. Yabbies. All of these names refer to a 10-legged “mini lobster” that inhabits many of the fresh water ecosystems on our planet outside of India and Antarctica.
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​What are Crawdads?

​Crawdads come in a wide variety of sizes and colors. Of the nearly 600 known species of Decapods, 30% are listed as endangered, and very little is actually known about another 20%.  The fish tank trade ships them all over the world with different marketing names like “blue lobsters.” They are an important part of the natural food chain in their NATIVE environments, providing food for raccoons, birds, predatory fish, snakes, and last year people consumed an estimated 75,000 tons of them! To each their own.

Here in Arizona, they are NOT native, but rather were originally imported by early settlers and currently listed by our Arizona Game and Fish Department as “highly invasive.” They are omnivorous and voracious competitors to most of our native freshwater species here. They have decimated the aquatic plant life in many of our mountain streams and they do serious damage to stream banks, causing some major erosion issues.
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CAN I PUT CRAWDADS in my PHOENIX Pond?

We do NOT recommend keeping them in your Sonoran Desert backyard pond for a several reasons:

1. Most of them are prolific and short-lived.  Once you have an established population, they are difficult to eradicate, and the dead ones will sit behind your rockwork and stink up your yard, as well as providing food for algae blooms.
2. Gardening your aquatic plants is no fun with mudbugs pinching your digits every time you try to divide an aquatic plant. They’re just not cooperative when it comes to gardening.
3. They will catch and kill your pet fish every chance they get. Yikes!
4. The Arizona Game and Fish Department has them listed as “invasive and unwanted” in our Great State 48.  Aquatic pets like crawdads have a habit of escaping into our wild ecosystems and wreaking havoc.
5. Many species of crawdads are diggers and will spend endless hours working on a way to get that 3’ deep tunnel they are programmed to build into your pond membrane system. It will be difficult for them to get through most high quality liners like EPDM or RPP; however, with the tools Mother Nature gave them, they very well may get through anything.

They grow them big in Montana!

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OTHER POSTS YOU MIGHT ENJOY:
WILDLIFE AROUND A POND
FROGS IN A PHOENIX POND
PONDS FOR BIRDS & BUTTERFLIES

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