Any crayfish is going to be an opportunist and a shredder if it's hungry. A
satiation technique for feeding seems to be able to keep them well behaved.
I've kept a lot of solo specimens in 2.5 and 5 gallon aquaria with plants
and sand as the filter with zero trouble to the plants and Physella snails I
use to eat algaes that grow on the surface plants. I've kept Cambarus (what
I think was Sciotoensis or Thomai, and robustus) this way.
I've kept O. immunis (papershell) without any trouble except when multiple
specimens were present in too small an aquarium, and kill each other. In a
75 gallon though, I was able to keep 3 papershells and they would pick apart
busted val with parastitic algae shred the plant and eat the algae in
addition to their high protein mysis diet. They would have standoffs, but
they'd have enough territory and food to not bother taking the fight to the
extreme. It's hard to say wether they did anything to snails because the
aquarium was my sunfish system, and there were never snails established in
that system.
I've found that White river crayfish (Procamburus acutus) behave themselves
very well. They seem to feed on periphyton and parasitic algaes (without
damaging plants), and grab the daily chunk of mysis floating by. They're
gregarious-in-small sizes (but don't put large adults together) and don't
seem to harm adult snails, I imagine they eat the eggs. I've had no trouble
maintaining large colonies of Physella snails among my densely planted
aquaria. I imagine they'd be a similar situation with the limpets.
Rusticus is destructive no matter how you approach keeping it.
Todd
The Muddy Maumee Madness, Toledo, OH
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
http://www.farmertodd.com
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