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Mitchell Weintraub, Florida, U.S.A.

Difficulty Culturing Scuds, Advanced Tips Regarding Osmotic Gradient Parameters

It sounds like you may have a mineral imbalance lowering the specific gravity of the water below what the freshwater scuds are accustomed to in a balanced natural spring water profile, possibly causing stress or causing ruptures to the air bladder. I am not a fan of reconstituted osmotic water for freshwater environments as is the standard practice in marine aquaria. Incidentally, these are actually Hyallela azteca not gammarus the name commonly used for many amphipods. I recommend using spring water containing a natural balanced mineral profile which will be in a better balanced asimilable form for the scuds. For the setup I recommend using crushed coral substrate and an overgrown planted aquarium with either duckweed or Asian water meal on the surface and an overgrown mass of Naja grass surface to substrate in the entire aquarium as this is a great nitrate buffer in a low oxygen environment. Filtration is optional and minimal aeration is best, no current. Bubbles breaking the surface every 1 or 2 seconds apart is all that is needed.

Can Scuds and Shrimp be kept together?

Scuds and Shrimp can be kept together, however the scuds can eventually out-compete the shrimp. Short term they can be kept together very well, the scuds tolerate more extreme ph fluctuation and temperature variance and are more prolific for this reason and will likely outperform the shrimp breeding, so they will crowd the shrimp out eventually. But if you are regularly harvesting the scuds only this may work very well for you. The nauplii (baby shrimp) are hard to distinguish from the very young scuds. If you decide to keep them together harvest scuds that are large enough to be certain they are scuds.

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How big are these Scuds as adults? I would like to feed them to Betta fish, & don’t know much about them.

Thank you for the inquiry, These range in size from 1/16″ to 5/16″ in length. Adults are about the same size as an adult brine shrimp. They make excellent food for your bettas. The bettas will eat the smaller ones first and the largest breeders will be the last to go, which enable the scuds to reproduce in their tank.
Here is some additional culturing information:
They do real well in a dirty/green water 10 gallon tank with playsand, naja grass, an airline that lets a bubble per second reach the surface and duckweed being fed an algae wafer every other day. They are much easier to culture compared to daphnia. Scuds are far less demanding than shrimp but similar, so I’m sure you will not have any problem keeping them. They seem to do best with sand substrate to borough with some coarse gravel to provide hiding places not completely covering the sand, floating plants such as duckweed and salvinia and Naja grass throughout the tank. They love algae wafers and eat any type flake food although I provide them with spirulina flake most often. One wafer to about 250 scuds should last 2-days. They feed on mulm, hair and thread algae (not especially fond of filamentous type though). Caution, they may out compete slower reproducing shrimp. They can coexist much like shrimp with smaller fish like guppies and endlers. These have been raised in Florida well water high gh water, fairly low conductivity of 290. The cleaner the tank the more supplemental food for best results. They are more active at night. They really don’t seem to mind dirty water as they thrive in some of my wet/dry filters as well. If you have any other specific questions please do not hesitate to ask.

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Scuds ‘Hyalella azteca’ a.k.a. Gammarus sp.

They do real well in a dirty/green water 10 gallon tank with playsand, naja grass, an airline that lets a bubble per second reach the surface and duckweed being fed an algae wafer every other day. They are much easier to culture compared to daphnia. Scuds are far less demanding than shrimp but similar, so I’m sure you will not have any problem keeping them. They seem to do best with sand substrate to borough with some coarse gravel to provide hiding places not completely covering the sand, floating plants such as duckweed and salvinia and Naja grass throughout the tank. They love algae wafers and eat any type flake food although I provide them with spirulina flake most often. One wafer to about 250 scuds should last 2-days. They feed on mulm, hair and thread algae (not especially fond of filamentous type though). Caution, they may out compete slower reproducing shrimp. They can coexist much like shrimp with smaller fish like guppies and endlers. These have been raised in Florida well water high gh water, fairly low conductivity of 290. The cleaner the tank the more supplemental food for best results. They are more active at night. They really don’t seem to mind dirty water as they thrive in some of my wet/dry filters as well. If you have any other specific questions please do not hesitate to ask.