Cool water detritus eaters

[swanberg]

Hi. Complete newbie here.

I have an odd question, it's not really a pond question, but I'm unsure where else to ask.
I have a cool-water fish tank (about 70-72degF) in which I keep catfish and goldfish. All fingerling size. I need a detritus eater - a crayfish or something similar, but when I go to a fish store, all they have are tropicals.

This is for my aquaponics (http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/) setup.
Snails will foul my pump, but I'm open to algae eating fish, crustacean, whatever. I'd prefer to be able to get it (them?) in the twin cities area.

This is a 55gal tank, so it needs to stay fairly small, and fresh-water, and may have up to 3ppt salt (although right now it only has a trace from sea salt I added for trace minerals.)

Any suggestions?

When I was a kid in a different northern state, we used to catch crawdads at the local pond. I'm happy to do that too, if someone can point me to a place to do it. I'm totally not in touch with the crawfish set here in the Twin Cities.

[Jake Langeslag]

Swanberg -
Your post is very interesting with some cool concepts that I have not heard of before. Your timing could not have been better either for the questions.

I was just up on location at one of my customers pond in the Twin Cities area and i noticed crawfish swimming all over in the pond and in the rocks. This was odd because I never added them nor did the home owner and this was the first time I have seen some in the pond. This pond is located to a natural pond about 75 feet away and I am pretty sure they migrated over. At the time that i saw the crayfish the pond did not have any large fish. It did have some small goldfish and shubunkins. Now the pond has koi that are up to 14 inches in length to I am curious to see what will happen to the crayfish.

I see you said you have catfish in your tank.. I think they would eat them when the fish get past the fingerling size, but for now you might be ok.

Also in the same weekend I just did a consultation for a home owner with a natural pond that they wanted to add a fountain to. I was amazed in that this pond hand a mostly much and clay bottom and shore and i saw thousands of crayfish. Most of them were pretty small. Ever 2 inches of the pond had a crayfish located in that spot. I am not sure why this pond is full of crawfish I have never seen anything like it.

I will be going back to this location and I may be able to try to catch you some if you are still interested.

Otherwise Algae eaters do a good job of eating the algae in the aquarium i have not noticed them eating the wase in though.

I would be curious to see what would happen with crawfish in a pond filled with larger fish. I also worry about the possibility of attracting raccoons to the pond. While most ponds are deep enough for them to not be a concern, the potential for frequent crawfish snacks may encourage them to hang around the pond more often, which can be a pain when they knock all your plants over (which i has happened to me! )

Thanks again for the interesting question and feel free to email me your contact info if you are interested!