Looks like those little shits that people say are harmless and just compete for food, or it looks like those bastards that are super dangerous and hard to kill.
I don't really know why I commented I don't know the difference
Used to have a least a thousand of these in a tank and ended up clearing it out. If you let them get out of hand they might start eating the plants and moss, but otherwise they’re fine. I let mine get so bad it looked like a constant rush hour with how many of them were swimming around, but it would’ve been great food for a cichlid of some kind I suppose
I did my masters on amphipods (scuds). I even discovered and named a few new species. When I was writing my dissertation the Wikipedia has a quote from a Victorian naturalist saying essentially " the general public does not and will never care about amphipods" 💔
He wasn't wrong tho 😂
I love scuds too! Two of my smaller tanks finally have a large enough population that I can start moving them to the larger tank as a food source and detritus patrol.
Nice, I just read a dissertation regarding aquatic isopods in the DC metro, though it did contain a lot of amphipod information- and yes I have found plenty before when collecting asellids, just little mini shrimp guys, good detrivores too.
I often see them as a mix of shrimp and crayfish.
They can be very much like little shrimp, crawling and swimming around, eating algae, picking food bits, but they also have crayfish tendencies of getting into fights, eating parts of plants, and using their claws to harm smaller animals.
Some plants are too hard/ not tasty for them. For example they let guppy grass be, but will totally decimate java moss - eat all small leaves and only left slim empty stems. Same with stargrass.
I don't know which moss exactly I had, but it looked similar to Java (don't they all lol), but mine didn't appear to damage the moss? At least not enough to prevent it from overtaking the tank. 😅
They nibbled a bit on leaves from other plants, but preferred to go after algae and shrimp/fish food, so generally left the plants alone.
I culture Moina (much smaller than scuds) as live food. I use a fine-meshed net. I just swish it around in the water a few times and dump the critters into my aquarium.
Scuds are cool and not nearly as dangerous as people think/say to other critters. In fact, I’d wager anyone stating that scuds are dangerous/a threat to dwarf shrimp are just passing on shitty second hand information they haven’t experienced first hand.
Scuds are good clean up crew members. They eat a lot of the same things that shrimp do. They can live harmoniously with shrimp in heavily planted setups and are no more of a threat than snails are. I’ve never seen a scud attack a shrimp, regardless of size. In my opinion, amano shrimp are more of a threat to dwarf shrimp than scuds.
Below is a link to a video posted on youtube by a shrimp breeder & seller talking specifically about scuds.
https://youtu.be/1vBXvhiLipo
It very much depends on the species.
Tiny scuds might not do much, but the ones I had (big ones) were often seen eating live animals.
I caught a video of it [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/NatuVisu/s/aB89igWL62).
Oh, they reproduced enough to be fine. They lay hundreds of eggs all the time. 😅
But the scuds did eradicate my watermites and bigger ostracods.
In my current tank, I have no scuds, so I could have more diverse organisms.
But I did want to get the mexican dwarf scuds (Hyalella), since they shouldn't be as bad as the big European Gammarus.
Sounds like your fish were keeping their population in check until you took them out lol. Guess they probably would have eaten your baby shrimp as well, though I have a tank infested with these and the rice fish ONLY eat the scuds and leave the booming shrimp population alone. The rice fish are basically constantly fat and laying eggs so I can only assume it’s cause they have this great live diet 😂
You should remove these. They multiply quite fast and compete for food..and if you decide to feed less they will look for easy prey in shrimp tank.
I do keep a few in a jar and use them like janitor ( I do this for snails as well ) then back in their little jar.
Good luck with what will be your new “scud” tank. Eventually they will eat that moss in your tank and move on to the other plants. You will never be able to get rid of them unless you put a predator in there to eat them but it will also eat your shrimp as will. They are excellent at hiding. I personally breed these by the thousands for live fish food. They are in some of my shrimp tanks unfortunately
https://preview.redd.it/w5ze1cgu3r8d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c0ea6d959ad5d8460880a6475bc8fa2c56d3851c
If you have the option of temporarily moving your shrimp and other livestock you want to keep to another tank, you can try the following:
1. Move desirable livestock to alternate tank
2. Lower the water in the infested tank as low as possible
3. Fill the infested tank with as much carbonated water as you can (this may take a few large bottles of carbonated water)
4. Watch the scuds go nuts as they are starved for oxygen
5. Allow the tank to cycle again
6. Replace livestock in their rightful home after the cycle is complete
You’ll want fish in there and also to add some dead leaves. In the absence of predators and an alternative food source like leaves they’ll decimate your plants. They especially love munching on moss when there’s nothing else available.
I have them in my regular fish tank and no problems. They decimated my plants in my wild tank because there were not predators. I added a single paradise fish to help keep them in check in that tank and new plants so hopefully these plants don’t become scud food
Scud! I believe they can out compete shrimp for supplies(so i suppose potentially a problem). IMO they're adorable little shrimpy-bugs and I wish to find a way to make my population of them boom! I love watching them crawl out of the substrate and then just shoot across the tank 🤣
Some people say pests I say healthy tank.. Either way not actually harmful to anything in the tank. Plus free food if you have any fish large enough to eat them
The only thing you should be worried about is overpopulation. Theses things populate like crazy and can live in any kind of environment. As an experiment I had 2 in a windowsill in a spider plant vase all NE winter. It was weird they never repopulated but I had another couple in a little fish bowl with like an inch of water and old plant matter. there ended up being hundreds of all sizes. Had them in my tank too and I thought I would have to get a new tank if I wanted them gone but somehow I got rid of them! I attacked them with my gravel vac ever time I water changed and tried not to over feed. Now I don’t see any when I vacuum which is astonishing to me because like I said they repopulate like crazy and are very fast and hide well. I feel like I did the impossible. I also have Cory catfish so maybe they ate them?
There are THOUSANDS of species that go by the common name "scuds." Apparently, some or most are detritivores. If you have a large tank with predators large enough to keep them under control, scuds are fine. If this is a nano tank, or a tank with no predators large enough, it's time to start setting up buckets as hospital tanks for anything you want to keep, bc the nuclear option is the only option in that case. I literally just lost 4 full grown adult silver dollars to scuds. A few popped up one day, and a week later, I presume when their food supply had been depleted, I started seeing weird puffy red marks on my silver dollars' lips. Then they went after their gills, and the fish were all dead in a few days. I've had scuds twice, and they were both omnivores. I've seen them gnawing on my fish's gills, eyes, and now lips. I had an entire nano tank decimated by them. I lost most of my plants, all of my shrimp, and a couple rasboras to the first batch of scuds I had. I've watched them attack mollies and eat ramhorn snails alive. I hope you got detritivores and have larger fish in this tank.
Scuds are generally harmless and can make good snacks for fish. I throw a couple in my beta tank every so often and she gets quite the workout going on a murder spree.
Seeing how yours are already out and about, I’m guessing you don’t have fish in that tank, or have very little.
I have noticed scuds can get a bit out of hand in tanks without a predator. So much so, that it seems my shrimp stop breeding in these tanks. I can’t say for certain, but I think they’re attacking my baby shrimps. The scuds do seem to be pretty [frequently hostile and non-consensual procreation] with each other. I just notice a complete lack of new shrimp babies in my couple tanks with lots of scuds.
Edit: trying to fix the wording in brackets that the mods didn’t like. I know we all want to be sensitive and woke, but it is what it is.
They look like amphipods
If this is a saltwater tank I wouldn’t worry
My Shrimp lives with amphipods and all are fine, my shrimp giving birth and the amphipods breeding without complications
But if it’s a fresh water tank then- I have no idea, my best guess is their probably not good
as someone who previously owned neoskrimpers with scuds, i can say i never had a problem. there were a lot but they didn’t seem to “outcompete” the shrimp. now they live with my crayfish
That was me before this…. 1 assassin snail later clear from the snails. The balance of creatures is tricky. I don’t want to eliminate these scuds just control them so my shrimps can multiply a bit more.
I had a scud problem to but i recently discovered that ghost shrimp will hunt and eat them
https://preview.redd.it/m6iannckod9d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e596e4a493b3f769e99c920c6c768c59710de7cc
I dont know if the pic is clear but this female is eating one
Looks like those little shits that people say are harmless and just compete for food, or it looks like those bastards that are super dangerous and hard to kill. I don't really know why I commented I don't know the difference
I’m just glad you’re here.
I made that comment as a joke but your reply damn near made me tear up
There’s no crying in shrimp talk!!
It’s not tears, just got some tank water in my eyes
Some briny shrimp pees found their way out my eyeballs, no matter
Strong emotions always welcome
Used to have a least a thousand of these in a tank and ended up clearing it out. If you let them get out of hand they might start eating the plants and moss, but otherwise they’re fine. I let mine get so bad it looked like a constant rush hour with how many of them were swimming around, but it would’ve been great food for a cichlid of some kind I suppose
Scuds! Pests, but won't do much except be an eyesore and possibly compete with your shrimp for food. A nice live treat for any fish you might have.
I did my masters on amphipods (scuds). I even discovered and named a few new species. When I was writing my dissertation the Wikipedia has a quote from a Victorian naturalist saying essentially " the general public does not and will never care about amphipods" 💔 He wasn't wrong tho 😂
Omigod I love scuds and can rarely find anything on them, do you have a link to your paper? I’d love to read it
I love scuds too! Two of my smaller tanks finally have a large enough population that I can start moving them to the larger tank as a food source and detritus patrol.
Amphipod owner here- I have a bunch of them and I love them, they’ve even had children as there is tiny amphipods in the substrate now!
The fact that you’ve discovered and named new types of amphipods is so amazing and cool!
Omg the bluntness of that quote lol. That is super cool that you discovered some species!
I love amphipods. I have an ID book on marine arthropods, but the amphs section was all hand-drawn w/ stipling so I can’t tell them apart lmao
Nice, I just read a dissertation regarding aquatic isopods in the DC metro, though it did contain a lot of amphipod information- and yes I have found plenty before when collecting asellids, just little mini shrimp guys, good detrivores too.
Scuds are basically tiny shrimp. They’re adorable if you embrace them!
I often see them as a mix of shrimp and crayfish. They can be very much like little shrimp, crawling and swimming around, eating algae, picking food bits, but they also have crayfish tendencies of getting into fights, eating parts of plants, and using their claws to harm smaller animals.
Not harmless. Outcompete shrimp for food and will slowly out populate them, and scuds will also decimate any live plants.
I've had a tank full of scuds and no issues with the plants. They do eat tiny animals, though, so something like shrimplets might be on the menu.
Some plants are too hard/ not tasty for them. For example they let guppy grass be, but will totally decimate java moss - eat all small leaves and only left slim empty stems. Same with stargrass.
I don't know which moss exactly I had, but it looked similar to Java (don't they all lol), but mine didn't appear to damage the moss? At least not enough to prevent it from overtaking the tank. 😅 They nibbled a bit on leaves from other plants, but preferred to go after algae and shrimp/fish food, so generally left the plants alone.
I put hornwort in my tanks for them. It grows fast enough that they can't eat it all.
RIP. You have fish tank aids, scuds.
But I always use protection!
Protection is never 100% effective.
Abstinence is the way
I culture them in an invert only tank and use them as live food for my bettas.
How do you catch them?
I agree with turkey baster, or when you do a water change vacuum them out.
Turkey baster maybe?
I culture Moina (much smaller than scuds) as live food. I use a fine-meshed net. I just swish it around in the water a few times and dump the critters into my aquarium.
Bettas?
Fish net works
I love scuds, I know they bug some people but I’ve got a few in my shrimp tank that I love to watch as well.
Scuds are cool and not nearly as dangerous as people think/say to other critters. In fact, I’d wager anyone stating that scuds are dangerous/a threat to dwarf shrimp are just passing on shitty second hand information they haven’t experienced first hand. Scuds are good clean up crew members. They eat a lot of the same things that shrimp do. They can live harmoniously with shrimp in heavily planted setups and are no more of a threat than snails are. I’ve never seen a scud attack a shrimp, regardless of size. In my opinion, amano shrimp are more of a threat to dwarf shrimp than scuds. Below is a link to a video posted on youtube by a shrimp breeder & seller talking specifically about scuds. https://youtu.be/1vBXvhiLipo
It very much depends on the species. Tiny scuds might not do much, but the ones I had (big ones) were often seen eating live animals. I caught a video of it [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/NatuVisu/s/aB89igWL62).
Good point. Seeing scuds in your water louse setup would be a bad thing.
Oh, they reproduced enough to be fine. They lay hundreds of eggs all the time. 😅 But the scuds did eradicate my watermites and bigger ostracods. In my current tank, I have no scuds, so I could have more diverse organisms. But I did want to get the mexican dwarf scuds (Hyalella), since they shouldn't be as bad as the big European Gammarus.
Sounds like your fish were keeping their population in check until you took them out lol. Guess they probably would have eaten your baby shrimp as well, though I have a tank infested with these and the rice fish ONLY eat the scuds and leave the booming shrimp population alone. The rice fish are basically constantly fat and laying eggs so I can only assume it’s cause they have this great live diet 😂
Scuds!! They ruined one of my tanks, had to entirely make a new one to get rid of them. Bane of my existance
You should remove these. They multiply quite fast and compete for food..and if you decide to feed less they will look for easy prey in shrimp tank. I do keep a few in a jar and use them like janitor ( I do this for snails as well ) then back in their little jar.
I’ve actually been trying to get a small tank of just these guys to breed as a live food source!
Good luck with what will be your new “scud” tank. Eventually they will eat that moss in your tank and move on to the other plants. You will never be able to get rid of them unless you put a predator in there to eat them but it will also eat your shrimp as will. They are excellent at hiding. I personally breed these by the thousands for live fish food. They are in some of my shrimp tanks unfortunately https://preview.redd.it/w5ze1cgu3r8d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c0ea6d959ad5d8460880a6475bc8fa2c56d3851c
Studs are not harmless to shrimp if there is not enough food they will hunt little shrimp and even steal the eggs of a pregnant female.
How do they get in a tank in the first place ? Plant hitchhikers ?
If you have the option of temporarily moving your shrimp and other livestock you want to keep to another tank, you can try the following: 1. Move desirable livestock to alternate tank 2. Lower the water in the infested tank as low as possible 3. Fill the infested tank with as much carbonated water as you can (this may take a few large bottles of carbonated water) 4. Watch the scuds go nuts as they are starved for oxygen 5. Allow the tank to cycle again 6. Replace livestock in their rightful home after the cycle is complete
No problem, just ugly
You’ll want fish in there and also to add some dead leaves. In the absence of predators and an alternative food source like leaves they’ll decimate your plants. They especially love munching on moss when there’s nothing else available. I have them in my regular fish tank and no problems. They decimated my plants in my wild tank because there were not predators. I added a single paradise fish to help keep them in check in that tank and new plants so hopefully these plants don’t become scud food
Add some shrimp-compatible fish, these make great live fish foods
Scud! I believe they can out compete shrimp for supplies(so i suppose potentially a problem). IMO they're adorable little shrimpy-bugs and I wish to find a way to make my population of them boom! I love watching them crawl out of the substrate and then just shoot across the tank 🤣
I have a scud tank! I love them
Some people say pests I say healthy tank.. Either way not actually harmful to anything in the tank. Plus free food if you have any fish large enough to eat them
The only thing you should be worried about is overpopulation. Theses things populate like crazy and can live in any kind of environment. As an experiment I had 2 in a windowsill in a spider plant vase all NE winter. It was weird they never repopulated but I had another couple in a little fish bowl with like an inch of water and old plant matter. there ended up being hundreds of all sizes. Had them in my tank too and I thought I would have to get a new tank if I wanted them gone but somehow I got rid of them! I attacked them with my gravel vac ever time I water changed and tried not to over feed. Now I don’t see any when I vacuum which is astonishing to me because like I said they repopulate like crazy and are very fast and hide well. I feel like I did the impossible. I also have Cory catfish so maybe they ate them?
Studs are not harmless to shrimp if there is not enough food they will hunt little shrimp and even steal the eggs of a pregnant female
Got a pair of Blue Rams. Got rid of the scuds, yet leave most of my shrimp alone. Yeah, I'm a bit perplexed too
How do you get rid of them?
There are THOUSANDS of species that go by the common name "scuds." Apparently, some or most are detritivores. If you have a large tank with predators large enough to keep them under control, scuds are fine. If this is a nano tank, or a tank with no predators large enough, it's time to start setting up buckets as hospital tanks for anything you want to keep, bc the nuclear option is the only option in that case. I literally just lost 4 full grown adult silver dollars to scuds. A few popped up one day, and a week later, I presume when their food supply had been depleted, I started seeing weird puffy red marks on my silver dollars' lips. Then they went after their gills, and the fish were all dead in a few days. I've had scuds twice, and they were both omnivores. I've seen them gnawing on my fish's gills, eyes, and now lips. I had an entire nano tank decimated by them. I lost most of my plants, all of my shrimp, and a couple rasboras to the first batch of scuds I had. I've watched them attack mollies and eat ramhorn snails alive. I hope you got detritivores and have larger fish in this tank.
Little man is a scud! Harmless, just might compete with your shrimp
[удалено]
Please respect each other. You can repost the comment, but find a better way to describe their behavior than "rapey and aggressive".
Scuds are generally harmless and can make good snacks for fish. I throw a couple in my beta tank every so often and she gets quite the workout going on a murder spree. Seeing how yours are already out and about, I’m guessing you don’t have fish in that tank, or have very little. I have noticed scuds can get a bit out of hand in tanks without a predator. So much so, that it seems my shrimp stop breeding in these tanks. I can’t say for certain, but I think they’re attacking my baby shrimps. The scuds do seem to be pretty [frequently hostile and non-consensual procreation] with each other. I just notice a complete lack of new shrimp babies in my couple tanks with lots of scuds. Edit: trying to fix the wording in brackets that the mods didn’t like. I know we all want to be sensitive and woke, but it is what it is.
My betta's reaction times are not great or he's lazy. I've seen him watching the scuds, but I'm not sure he ever eats them.
What?¿??????
They look like amphipods If this is a saltwater tank I wouldn’t worry My Shrimp lives with amphipods and all are fine, my shrimp giving birth and the amphipods breeding without complications But if it’s a fresh water tank then- I have no idea, my best guess is their probably not good
Scuds, all good. If you see too many, slow down on your feeding of the tank.
They eat baby shrimps.
Congratulations, you have tank roaches.
as someone who previously owned neoskrimpers with scuds, i can say i never had a problem. there were a lot but they didn’t seem to “outcompete” the shrimp. now they live with my crayfish
Actually these guys are harmless for fish and could even be used as food. If I’m not mistaken
This is me rn but with bladder snails that hitch hiked off of some giant duckweed I bought 😭😭
That was me before this…. 1 assassin snail later clear from the snails. The balance of creatures is tricky. I don’t want to eliminate these scuds just control them so my shrimps can multiply a bit more.
I had a scud problem to but i recently discovered that ghost shrimp will hunt and eat them https://preview.redd.it/m6iannckod9d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e596e4a493b3f769e99c920c6c768c59710de7cc I dont know if the pic is clear but this female is eating one
They’ll crush your moss. I’m nuking a tank because of them. They destroyed all the plants
I love how people who create a natural environment, simply hate it when nature takes its place. Scuds are fine