Despite the rich diversity of freshwater crayfish species, current world aquaculture production is largely based on only a small number of species. Redclaw, is a relatively recent entrant into this industry, but has been recognised as a candidate species with significant potential because of some key physiological traits attractive for culture. To date however, the industry has yet to develop specific commercial formulated diets for this species. Traditional standard dose-response trials have evaluated effects of different feed ingredients and their combinations but there is still only limited information on this animal’s genetic make-up in relation to digestive metabolism. Here, we examined expression profiles of expressed sequenced tags (ESTs) from hepatopancreatic transcriptomes in redclaw individuals fed either starch or soluble cellulose in their diets at the 20 per cent inclusion level. Individuals were fed with either a starch (RD, reference diet) or soluble cellulose (TD, test diet) diet for one week and then RNAseq libraries were constructed from the hepatopancreas and sequenced using the Ion Proton sequencing platform with data annotated using the NCBI database. Analysis of ESTs from both test groups revealed that most digestive enzyme genes expressed in redclaw were involved in carbohydrate metabolism and the diet with soluble cellulose (TD) showed higher expression levels of carbohydrate metabolism genes. In particular, genes that encoded enzymes involved in hydrolysis of lignocellulosic material showed the highest expression levels.  In contrast, TD resulted in lower expression of alpha amylase compared with the RD in redclaw. Identification of a vast array of redclaw digestive enzyme genes and presence of various isoforms suggest that redclaw have an innate genetic capacity to utilise a wide range of carbohydrate substrates of different structural complexity. Thus, there is a potential to incorporate complex plant polysaccharides into their formulated diets in order to reduce total feed costs.