Breeding behavior of scuds

[Cactus Bastard]

I think I found a pair of scuds in some sort of mating ritual. I thought it was pretty interesting so I took some pictures. They would occasionally shift around a little bit, but they stayed like this for several hours.



I don't know if this is them actually mating or not, but the male does appear to have some sort of sex organ out. There appears to be a saddle of eggs on the female one too. I did not notice the "saddle" until I took the picture and enlarged it.

[Neonshrimp]

Wow, nice picture! Several hour, that puts some species to shame

By the way, what plant is that?

[badflash]

The male will stay with the female for days, at least until he's sure she's berried. Very interesting critters, even if they are ugly.

[Cactus Bastard]

Well, he outlasted me after their lights went off I went to bed

The male will stay with the female for days, at least until he's sure she's berried. Very interesting critters, even if they are ugly.

Wow, that's interesting, they could have easily been together for much longer than the few hours I was around watching. I have the lights set to come on after I've already left for work in the AM, so I only get to watch my critters in the evenings. (This is to avoid being late in the mornings).

I do like the scuds. I didn't even know I had more than one until I saw these two together. They were introduced into my cherry tank back in June when I added some pond water to my tank. I've seen a couple of baby scuds; I thought maybe they reproduced asexually.
They've possibly eaten a couple of baby shrimp, but I still grin a bit whenever I happen to see one. They spend most of their time in the denser sections of the Java Moss (the plant in the picture btw).

[badflash]

I found them not to be good RCS tank mates. Their population can suddenly grow out of control and they are hard to get rid of when you don't want them. In large numbers they stresss out the RCS even if they don't take any babies. I've never seen them be agressive with anything and they seem to just eat the left overs.

I raise them for live food for some of my darters.

[Cactus Bastard]

I can imagine them being hard to get rid of, but the tank they're in is only ten gallons and I'm not really worried about them getting out of control.

[badflash]

I became concerned when they suddenly leaped in population to several hundred and they were all over the place. The other shrimp could never rest as they were bumping into them all the time. Now I keep them in their own space.

[Neonshrimp]

badflash,

Were you able to solve the overcrowding problem in the case you just mentioned?

[badflash]

I removed the shrimp to another tank and added a 3 spot gourami. When that didn't get them all, I broke down the tank.

[Cactus Bastard]

I'll have to be careful to keep them confined to the single tank. Do they lay their eggs or carry them until the babies hatch?

[badflash]

Just like other shrimp, the females carries the berry until they hatch.

[invert phil]

Gammarus are really interesting amphipods and exhibit a behaviour called amplexing where the male will carry around a female mate. The female actually decides if she wants to mate with that particular male and allows him to hold her. Females prefer big males over small ones, so in theory small males should be rare because no females will breed with them eventually losing the genes that cause the shrimp to be smaller in size. In the wild with predators this doesn't happen because the larger males are more visable to predators and they get eaten which limits the size they can grow to.

[infopimp]

Ah yes... scud love.

And after the babies are born... wow. I don't think I will ever truly be able to tame these guys... have you seen how small the babie scuds are???

I've created a Scud sucker - a chopstick, some aquarium airhose line, and a few light duty clip-ties to hold it together... Meanwhile... My little South American Puffers readily accept all "scud donations" I make available to them. I'm working on the problem.

[Sal]

This was very interesting reading . I have a pond in the yard with floating native frogbit which I got from canal and have seen scuds which I tought of adding to my tank but glad I did not.

They are neat and imagine just great food for fish.

[Carlo]

Are scuds more of a nuisance than anything else? Or are they a delightful addition to a shrimp aquarium?