I recently caught about a dozen scuds (Gammarus) in a local creek. I set up a 5 gallon tank with a sponge filter, a bunch of pre-soaked oak leaves and a few pulled-apart plastic scrubbies to provide extra surface area.
About twice a week I throw in a few rabbit pellets and add water as needed. I have a scud population explosion after only a month. These guys seem to be super easy to breed and appear to be a good live food source for puffers.
Scud Culture
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- Tiny Shrimp
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I've been feeding them to my apistos, barbs, and danios for a couple months. The barbs and danios don't do much with the adults other than chase them around nipping at them, but have no problems at all with the younger, half-grown, ones. I even have reason to believe that my Hypancistrus, those in the apisto tanks, have been eating those that try to seek refuge in their caves.
Larry Vires
Larry Vires
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- Egg
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- The Fisherman
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Re: Scud Culture
I'm definitely interested in learning to culture them.badflash wrote: These guys seem to be super easy to breed and appear to be a good live food source for puffers.

I've got a bunch of these bad-boys in my SW tanks, though they are not easy to capture, since they are in the LR.
How did you go about capturing them? I live near a creek, but have never seen any. Maybe I would be better off pulling a few from my SW tanks.
Badflash, do you do water changes on your setup, or just top off evaporation?
- badflash
- Master Shrimp Nut
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I just went to the local creek and found an area with a little back water and real low flow. Leaves were trapped there. I scooped up a bunch of the leaves and there they were.
Leaves & rabbit pellets seem to be fine for them.
When I do my weekly water changes I drain some of my cleanest tanks into the scud tank.
Leaves & rabbit pellets seem to be fine for them.
When I do my weekly water changes I drain some of my cleanest tanks into the scud tank.