I want to plant water lilies in my dam, but need to protect from yabbies. How can I do this?

Yabbies are like a kind of small crayfish that are native to Australia. They can apparently be very destructive %26amp; dig up plants, eat leaves/flowers, etc of water lilies. There are lots in our dam %26amp; eradication isn't an option. So I need to come up with some kind of protection. The only idea we've had so far was to buy some thin wire or mesh, with holes small enough to let water through but not yabbies. Then to make that like a kind of giant bowl and put it into the dam... and plant the water lilies in big buckets (with small holes drilled to let water through) inside the wire bowl. The wire would need to protrude above the water level at least a bit, so as to stop the yabbies just swimming over it. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

I want to plant water lilies in my dam, but need to protect from yabbies. How can I do this?
Wow, the ideas we have to come up with just to have a little beauty in our lives, huhn! All I can think of is a piece of straight culvert or drainage pipe with slits in it, sunken straight down into the water and drop your (smaller around buckets) of bulbs down into it, you don't say how deep you're going to have to sink the buckets so I would only hope no matter which route you take is going to allow for sunlight to 'bring up' the stems. It sounds like your idea might work though, but at least give the plastic pipe idea a second thought, I've seen it done before and it did work. Good Luck.
Reply:Unfortunately I don't have a solution, but I would like to say that Yabbies can climb. I have a pet yabbie that has climbed the filter tube up to the roof of the tank and has managed to open the tank and crawl out. Since then i have made the roof heavier, but he still climbs.





I think your idea is good, though. Good luck mate!