The way I harvest is I rotate small clumps of Java moss I use long tongs to pull the moss out of the scud tank and shake them into the tank I’m feeding… then I’ll grab a fresh clump of moss and repeat the process every 2-3 days the scuds enjoy munching on the Java moss rotating it out, gives the moss a chance to regenerate. I keep my scuds in a tank with aragonite sand . And sponge filter well cycled , this colony is quite massive in a simple 10 gal I do about a 20% wc every week or 2. Great video I’m a scud keeper , I enjoy watching them as well as a great food source🙂 -jeff.
@@chrishowell4775 ahh I see, I just grab a small plastic container hold the moss over it if any fall off the moss I can just dump them in with the apistos
Years ago way back in the 70's my brother and I regularly hiked to a crystal clear stream with a Sand Bottom and Watercress everywhere...On these outings we gathered many plants for our aquarium which we kept together our entire childhood. One thing we loved were what we called "fresh water shrimp" or scuds that were always hiding in the sand. We brought many home with us and put them in our aquarium where they did live very happily, though some of the larger fish ate a few. Thanks for bringing me back. Also, glad I found your channel, you are an inspiration. Still keeping fish in my 60's. One of my brothers grew up to run a fish hatchery of all things.
I absolutely love my scuds. I got them as a live food. But then fell in love with them and their zoomie antics. Gave them their own 2.5 gallon tank. I do sometimes feed them to fish that need live food. But they are really mostly pets now. I like the nickname “fairy shrimp”😊 Great video, thanks Alex!
I work at petsmart and I was siphoning tanks today and noticed a little bug like things swimming against the siphon. These are Scuds! They were only in the snail tanks my guess to how they got there was that probably they were a pest from the snail breeders. I took as many as I could find. I even saw a few of them piggybacking and took those and put them in a 2.5 I’m my fish room. Thank you for making this video now I can have a very nutritious live food for the rest of my aquariums!
Put at least 100 scuds in my 1000 liter pond yesterday. Caught wild at a dam. My paradise gouramis, odessa barbs and platy pond is currently going wild. Feeding frenzie is incredible to watch.
I bought some Java moss mats from aquatic arts and they came with scuds so now my betta has a bunch of friends, I took the moss off the mats and have them on plant weights so it’s easier to take the moss out and feed other tanks (I use reptile feeding tongs and a brine-shrimp net)
These little guys are truly something else. I have been culturing them for a year now and everything in your video is spot on. They don't eat plants only plant I've seen them give any trouble is moss but other than that they are harmless. These guys can survive chlorine and high salt levels. They are tough as hell. My fish love em.
To collect them I throw in a slice of cucumber or zucchini. Come back in 20-30 minutes and scoop up the zucchini . It is usually covered with scuds. I feed the scuds and put the zucchini back to collect again. I’ve found scuds to be the most consistent live food to raise for my nano fish that only like live food such as pea puffers and Elassoma gilberti. They also work well with daphnia so you get double the live food. I keep in 5 gallon buckets.
I am revisiting this video because I can validate they are excellent to keep algae away! However, they are very hard to keep with other fish. I got them accidentally with a plant order and little by little they started to populate my shrimp/only tank. I cannot say the shrimp were thriving and the plants were Ok. I decided to place an electric blue crayfish there and obviously he ate all the plants that were not thriving anyway. I had an algae problem in my goldfish tank so I removed the hair-algae-infested plants in hopes that my crayfish will eat them. What I discovered the next day is that the crayfish only ate a few stems but the hair algae was gone! So I tried it again with other plants and I had the same results. Based on that, I am keeping a separate culture tank in my basement and not only will I be feeding my fish scuds from time to time but I will use it for quick algae-cleaning baths for my plants. Thanks for such a great video!
I understand the struggle. Its a hard balance ...but i will say, lots of nano fish help control them, and the babies hide in the substrate if its got air pockets and voids like aquasoil or gravel....and will come out when they grow large enough and at night... ideally the fish eat almosg all the scuds before you see them ... but more live in plants, and little hiding spots under substrate. Thanks for your observations as well!
Thank you for making this video! So many of these tutorial videos about aquatics are so boring and often waste a lot of time talking about unnecessary things. You are such a joy to listen to! You express yourself well, and don’t bore me to tears while actually getting to the point and teaching me a lot of information quickly. Definitely my kind of channel, I will be subscribing. Thanks again and I look forward to checking out your other videos. 🥰
I adore these little creatures since I first saw them in the stream as a high school student. Recently I did a massive research, and 3 weeks ago I started a natural aquarium project. I have a planted tank, substrate + sand, the water is greenish, I'm soaking a piece of wood from the forest to add tannins, my tank does have detrius, rocks from the gammarus stream, proper aeriation and happy fish. However the gammarus that I added first to the aquarium, kept dying, I found a dying gammarus every couple of days. Even if I saw some of them putting pieces of detrius into their mouth. Today morning I found my last gammarus dead and I'm devastated. I'm wondering how to keep these beautiful creatures alive... I can only find articles about handling "gammarus-infested" tanks, how sturdy they are, how it's almost impossible to kill them... And yet here I am, the loser who just wants to observe their life, but they constantly die on me... Can you give me some advice based on this, how to keep them happy?
I always learn a lot watching your videos. I purchased a scud culture from Aquatic Arts with your code a week ago, thank you. Starting to see some scud movement. I have a sand and small stone substrate plus Java moss and there’s some green hair algae and some plant trimmings. So scud on!!!
Why thank you for the support and kind words. Feel free to enjoy all 1000+ videos haha. 6 years of nerdery. Welcome welcome (unless this is Goki Doki's second yt handle...in that case, hello sir!)
The first time I commented on your channel you responded. You “hooked” me you could say ; ] I know how hard you work on your content thanks for making us feel important
Great job! That's all good information. Scuds are useful and fun critters. In the tanks I raise shrimp in, they are not invited. But in all the other tanks they are part of the ecosystem and a food source. My Bettas and guppies keep them in ✅
I’ll say it again: I love your channel and I love my scuds. Always amazed when I put 20 or so scuds into a container with an algae-covered plant and they eat the algae and leave the plant alone. At least that’s been my experience. My experience has also been that even adding over 50 to a 10 gal tank won’t make a dent in algae if there is a lot of mulm and detritus or a lot of fish in the tank, so I don’t use them for algae control in a tank, only in a separate container to clean a plant if needed - in this context they are amazing algae eaters. For fun, I keep some scuds in a few beautifully planted vases and they mostly leave the plants alone. In these vases I do not feed the scuds and they take care of any plant matter that isn’t healthy but without extra food, they do not seem to reproduce much - or maybe they eat their own young. Maybe I just have odd scuds that don’t eat my plants or have plants the scuds don’t like. Surprisingly stable in these planted vases long term. Been keeping scuds as food cultures for several years now. I put scuds in most of my tanks and keep a few cultures solo in ½ gal small vases with gravel/crushed coral and a big ball of pearl weed or java moss - I keep water topped off with tank water and sometimes add fish food. Keeping at least one of these small vases in front of my kitchen window gives me green water and lots of baby scuds. (However if a scud gets into green water with my copepods or my seed shrimp, I end up with only scuds - I assume scuds are eating them?) I often pull any size other than largest scuds and feed them to all my non-nano fish. I never add scuds to my nano fish tanks or to my shrimp tanks because I don’t want the scuds surviving to be large enough to eat nano fish fry or baby shrimp. Not taking chances there. Baby endlers are so tiny! When I have large scuds in excess I add some to my 75g for my bigger fish to hunt. I often find scuds living in my hob filter material. Tanks with fish rarely have scuds visible to me, so they definitely haven’t been able to take over. And it’s the one food source I’ve been able to maintain long term. (Getting a good handle on seed shrimp now too.)
Very informative. Thank you for making this video! I like that you go into the more technical reasons for things involving planted aquarium ecosystems. Your channel has been very helpful for a beginner like me.
I find scuds very interesting. I had never heard of them in our aquarium hobby (the Netherlands). As far as I know they aren't even for sale here. I feel water fleas are more common here instead. Its fun to see the differences in the hobby between countries
Devils Lake ND grows unusually large scuds that produce record growing yellow perch. Often times the scuds come flowing out of ice holes. Another large scud factory is the Bighorn River.
Thank you so much for this! I tried scuds once and my guppies didn’t give them a chance. I didn’t know anything! I figured they would be good enough to hide on a very planted tank. Now I got some as hitchhikers in my Java moss and they are a welcomed guest. I think I have enough biofilm, algae and food but you make me think that they will cause issues long term on my 5 gallon shrimp planted tank. I won’t get rid of them but you are making me think it is best to remove the shrimp and maybe see if I can get a culture going on. By the way! I have been looking for isopods from retailers but had no luck. They look so awesome and I would love to keep some. Maybe that can be a topic for the future! Thanks again and stay safe. Feel better too!
Awesome, thank you! Let me know if anything goes wrong...or extra well haha. I take my recommendations personally and make sure theyre doing everything correctly
Yea! A video that isn't bashing the crap out of scuds. Scuds are amazing and while yes they will eat live plants sometimes that's not really an issue if you know how to work around. I believe the positive benefits far outweigh anything negative. Like you said if there are fish in there they really can't overpopulate. I have found that to be true. Thanks for the deep dive and the positive video about scuds.
I like your nursery idea.. (also Dan's Fish vid) But, have several of those in a scud tank. Modify the lids with holes and mesh. Drop one into feed fish, when you go away for a week.
I saw at the end that little black box with a micro metal looking screen used to scoop them out with… it looked like a coffee filter I picked up at a thrift… thanks for the info and a repurpose idea🙃
You were right the first time. It's square meters, square meter of bottom. They are for the most part bottom dwellers...and yes that means if there is a 3 foot thick matte of plant material, yes that is still considered bottom. It's not water column.
I picked up a number of pieces on wood, in the bottom of a stream, that were covered in scuds. The bottom of the stream had a lot of broken shale. Oatka creek, NY
I love how all your videos are so in depth and researched! I just ordered some scuds, primarily to feed to my puffer, so planning on keeping them in a separate set up but do they need a light cycle or would they be ok if kept in the dark, under my tank, in the cabinet? Also would they coexisit well with snails? I’d like to condense my live food cultures as much as possible but I would think that they would out compete the snails for food and/or eat the eggs.
Would i be able to seed the back part of a matten filter to feed the main part of the tank with scuds? Also would they be able to exist in the same culture as something like live blackworms?
Hello!!! Another great video! Question: Do you have any advice for setting up a quarantine/disinfecting/treatment tank for scuds that I can use to make sure they are healthy and safe for my aquarium?? I have 4 or 5 dosen scuds I caught in a local lake and wNt to use them in my planted dirt/sand sub food web/eco system tank. (You advised me on this tank and collection buckets in the comments of your outdoor collection/culturing methods.
I simply observe them for a couple weeks .... then maybe try feeding some to a cheap fish thats hearty... like a guppy or danio...and just keep an eye out for any issues ( which are rare)
Great video! I introduced them by accident to a native aquarium I had some years ago with some wild myriophyllum that I found in a pond, and them were amazing. I was wandering how would you recomend to clean them up from parasites if collecting wild since it seems imposible to get them here where I live from a trusty source like a fish store or something
Its really tricky honestly. Anything that kills them, kills shrimp. I think it would involve moving the fish and hitting the tank with some nasty meds or chemicals
I have scuds from collecting duckweed, water primrose(ludwigia), daphina, mosquito larvae, & moss from 2 area lakes. My fish enjoy them. Have over 8 containers where they range in various numbers.
I've always wondered what scuds actually looked like. Pretty alien looking lil critters. Now if only they would eat planaria they would be perfect, lol. 👍❤️👍
Ah, so I've had scuds all this time but didn't know what they were. I had an abandoned tank of water that turned green and they grew so large. Also, an easy way to grow green water - add yeast to water, stand it in the sun for 3 days and it'll turn bright green. A few more days and it'll be even brighter. No need to buy spirulina and such. I found that feeding scuds yeast directly clouds the water too much and they die. Tank detritus and uneaten fish food is the best.
Tip: while studying entomology and in the breeding and colonization of terrestrial insects, i learned that population growth rate directly corresponds to the size of rhe habitat, and the size and consistency of food supply. When breeding terrestrial isopods and other insects, i would always alowly taper the ammount of food i i would give them. It worked really well!!! I bet this concept would qork for a uda as well!!!
@@Fishtory with isopods, the mothers will re-absorb the nutrients of the fertilized embryos so that she will not go hungry and not have babies in an environment where they are likely to starve. With terrestrial insects, If you step down food slowly, is save and very effective. I'd bet scuds respond similarly.
Informative video, thank you! Discovered your channel maybe a month ago and it aligns with my tank keeping goals as well. I wanted to ask a quick question as someone who set up my first planted/ecosystem tank and have been finding a lot of mixed messages about scuds in shrimp tanks. I have a planted 13 gallon that I've intended to showcase shrimp in. I currently have 3 mystery snails and have been waiting for the tank to season before getting neos from my lfs. My plants have really filled in and I have some algae on my wood/rock/filter and noticed a scud about two weeks ago that I spotted again today. To be honest, I was pretty excited at first! But after doing more research I'm getting worried they might outcompete my future shrimp. I'm not really interested in any nuclear options to deconstruct the tank since I don't mind having them, I'd just also love to have shrimp. Do you think its reasonable to try and manage their population by baiting with zucchini for example, or am I setting myself up for sadness lol?
Theyre pretty sneaky. Its hard to get em all... they will eat some of your baby shrimp, but if you dont over feed, and remove dead leaves and plant debris you should be able to keep their numbers in check, just enough to keep a growing colony.
I only recently started some scuds. They can be problematic but they have worked well for me. In case I can't finish this tonight I want to ask if they are a problem with baby shrimp? I think they are but maybe I had something else going on.
This video was so helpful! I just happened upon these creatures when they came with the plants from the fish store, and now they are definitely making more in my planted tank! Question: my tank is currently fishless, only scuds and aquascaping. I had wanted to add some shrimp and corys and one rabbit snail. I’m okay if the scuds eat some shrimp and the corys eat some scuds, but am I risking losing all my scuds this way? Second question: I have a 3-gallon planted tank with just a betta and snail. It is filterless due to the tank’s unusual shape, so I have to keep up on cleanings, but it has balanced out well. If I add some scuds to that tank are they likely to survive the low-oxygen conditions? Thanks so much for your informative video, I definitely saved this video for future reference and will watch more!
Scuds need a decent amount of oxygen...but they can breath by swimming to the surface quickly to take a gasp...so theyll probably be okay in the 3 gallon. And scuds can potentially stop a shrimp colony from increasing... party because they will steal the berries/ shrimp eggs right off mother shrimp... which is obviously stressful to the female as well
I think i'm going to have to order up some scuds for my little planted tank. It currently has a single male betta and a cory cat in it. Hoping that the scuds can be somewhat self sustaining, population wise, with java fern, drift wood, etc to hide in and around.
Did you just say you will put a dead fish into a compost tank? That’s cool, I like the scud idea, I have been thinking about establishing something like what you get with a marine tank with amphipods in freshwater, I looked into sea monkeys but they have to be dried out. I am thinking more of the idea of a refugium than a nursery, yeah same thing right, but I think refugium would imply a bigger stationary thing. Good explanation too. I definitely want to have them in the tank rather than dropped in for feeding. Especially with bigger more aggressive fish I think it is beneficial for the fish to be concentrated more on food that may be found rather than messing with each other for tank dominance. Thanks.
Yeah it's a tank that definitely isn't fish safe due to ammonia and bacteria galore, but for bacteria fungi, plankton, insects and other small organisms.
Well, in my more father fish inspired moments, I did add some stuff to my tank earlier on and I finally ID'd and caught a scud in my tank. I'll see if s/he survives in his isolation jar. If it multiplies, I'll feed them to my daughter's guppies and keep it away from my shrimp and snails for now. Tons of copepods in my green water bin. I have a few other funky things in the main tank that I'm still trying to identify.
Hmmm. Lost my other comment somewhere. Anyhow, seems like they don't reproduce asexually like daphnia so it may be a short lived experiment. But still, fun to explore the tank and learn more about the critters inside.
Out of black worms Daphnia and these which would you recommend for keeping. Thank you for all you do love your content and once I get some mulah I'm going to be donating.
I got some scuds today. I'm not exactly sure but it seems they're eating my copepods. They'll swim up to the Amazon frogbit grab a copepod sink down to the bottom, while eating, then swim back up. They're a lot more interesting to watch than I thought.
@Fishtory lol they do look like xynomorph heads. They swam around for a couple of hours then dissappeared. It's a blackwater riparium with plenty of mulm dead leaves and seed pods to eat but 2 of them decided to go after copepods. I have copepods by the thousands, but it was interesting. Ill give them 4 weeks to colonize before adding predators.
I found alot swimming around my tank and couldnt find out, daphnia or scuds, seems i must have both but i i can see my little new fish eating them. Probaly got them from previously bought fishwater
Believe it or not my wife and daughter had a 2gal with a beta that somehow got “infected” with scuds they freaked out and before I became aware “sterilized” the tank. I’ve been trying to get my 32gal “infected” ever since.
Bbs are better for small fish and or communities with shrimp as well, because they are basically pests to baby shrimp, and too large for tiny fry ..bbs are loved by all fish and only last a few hours in freshwater
Are scuds something that could be cultured then frozen and fed in cube form to fish to avoid them colonizing the tank? I'm going to have shrimp in my tank and don't want scuds eating them.
I agree, they do have great clean up methods and it’s one of my cleanest tanks because of them. However, we had a whole colony of assassins sails breeding in our tank, and once the scuds started popping up they slowly started eating and killing our assassins snails. Now all that’s left is empty shells. We put a mystery snail in the tank and he was dead within two days. How do I get ride of them for good? We have done water changes however that just lowers the amount of scuds in the tank. We don’t want them anymore and would rather have our snails back.
So this is like 3 months old, but I wait till this time of year and collect them! They all come from the same spot. But I keep them in their own tank as pets. I also am patient enough to try and treat them as well. Lol.
When you say scuds can eat shrimp, are you talking neocaridina or amanos? And, would you recommend dumping a colony in a 15 gallon aquascaped pea puffer tank (for an occasional snack) or keeping them separately? Thank you! I always appreciate your wealth of knowledge. 😊
Yes and yes... scuds would only eat shrimp when desperate..they prefer any rotting plants, algae or bio film. And as this video shows later, you can keep them in a tank alone or keep them in a fish tank as. A long term food source.
The colony in my 20L is gone, so none in the new 10g. I am conflicted about that but since I've not added fish yet, all the 1st time pregnant shrimp are safe.
Do you think the adult scuds get too big for gulf coast pygmy sunfish or asian stone catfish to eat them or is it fine? I was going to do a tank with those as my biggest fish and I wanted to use scuds as a food source, but I worry if the scuds will eventually overrun the tank and kill my plants as they reach adulthood. I'm not good at picturing the food size vs the size of the fish's mouth.
I can get these from a local fishless spring/pond. You mentioned treating disease, is it known how effective med's are on the Pomphorhynchus laevis or acanthocephalan worm. I used metronidazole on my rams with success, but want to breed them, so live food. Are daphnia safer?
Daphnia, brine shrimp and cyclopse are indeed safer. Most dewormers kill the scuds at doses that kill the parasites anyhow. Levamisol in extremely low doses will treat flat worms and true worms but that's all I've been able to find. That being said, I haven't had issues with them infecting my fish that I know of. But I am aware it could happen.. especially scuds from the hobby
Something I do find helpful is when videos are broken up into sections so I can know where to find specific info. Like intro, general info, finding stock, feeding, breeding..I dunno that kind of stuff
Yeah they let big channels do that...and if a video is popular they do it for you automatically via the google search results, however its a bit tricker to but links with a name of the chapter but that links to something random. They need to fix it!
@@Fishtory ooh didn't know that was associated to account size. Or that it likes to just say F it and throw random links. That's.. lovely. Appreciate the work you put into all of this. PS scripted seemed cool. Kind of like the unscripted tangents though. You did seem to be more comfortable and loose by the end vs the beginning and like you weren't held at point to read a cue card
@Fishtory I was hoping to figure out how to source all the biodiversity in your tank could i order some of your water to seed my tanks with all the random worm life and whatnot i have fish shrimp n snail tanks and 2 im about to setup that im not sure how id like to setup other than heavily planted and super biodiverse cant choose my substrate yet and not certain on capping ive been watching your videos and still cant decide i wanna minimize water changes and having to add nutes i wanna create pretty self sustainable tanks
Due to the potential issues scuds can present to plants, would neocardinia shrimp or ostracods (seed shrimp) be a good alternative for a live food in the tank?
100%. If you don't have fish that will eat every scud you drop in the tank, in a hurry... its best not to choose scuds...they eat plants and kill shrimp colonies quickly... but if you have, say tetras... they will destroy every last scud in there in 2 minjtes flat lol
I find they like aquasoils with some leaves. The pockets hikd enough room for babies and sleeping scuds etc. Fluval or ada amazonia are my go to.... ada amazonia if im planting the tank heavily
Good morning mr. Alexander I have a question ❓ so you mentioned in your video that scuds they live in a vast variety of different places and climates so my question is do you have to drip acclimate them before putting them in your tank or can you just drop them in without worry since they are hardy
