Thoughts on Scuds? (Gammarus Shrimp)

I just recently watched a video about scuds and how they are a good live food, but I have also heard that they can be like a plague in the aquarium due to their ability to reproduce uncontrollably and pretty much devour anything green. What are your thoughts on whether they are worth it or not? I would be using them for feeding pea puffers, Figure 8 Puffers, Angelfish, and I plan to expand my breeding into discus, rams, corys, and rainbowfish. Are they nutritious for my fish? Do you think I could do a colony of them in a 2.5g?

 

Probably

Feed them 1 at a time with tweezers though?

 

They wont be a problem in tanks with fish. They only eat plants that are alive as a last resort. I have some in an invert only tank and they havent eaten the ludwigia yet. I have found that some populations on large numbers eat only certain plants. Either way though you should be fine with all those fish. The corydoras may not eat them though

 

I like scuds, they’re great fish food. They shouldn’t eat live plants as long as there’s other food available. They love algae, zucchini, and dead plant leaves. They reproduce according to how much food you give them, so unless you’re overfeeding, they shouldn’t go out of control. They’re fairly high in protein, so they should be perfect for breeding any cichlid. They also make fantastic puffer food.

 

Sounds like a go to me! I pretty much have all of that on hand anyways! Do you think a 2.5g tank will suffice for harvests a few times a week? In the future I would step it up to a bigger tank.

 

That should work perfectly!

 

I wish I could keep them. My little dats loved them.
Unfortunately I suspect I'd need a chiller to make that work.
I tried keeping them in my snail pail (~50 gal garbage can). I got more than a solid half gallon of them. By mid summer the last of them had died.
That bioload was crazy and the pail was getting daily water changes and the water still turned black/gray very quickly. The ones II was trying to raise were the ones from up north that go up for sale in Jan on local Craigslist.
They are not the scuds people normally think of.


My hand for scale those are ~1" long.
There were even blue ones which I tried to culture in a bowl.
I will try again in Jan.

 

they sound like bladder snails in terms of their reproduction.. I liked my bladder snails at first but I feed way too much to have something like that. So I would be wary of scuds if it were me. I like to feed heavy and I don't fast my fish either

 

Sounds like a balancing act is necessary to keep a stable colony. I honestly think I will give it a go here in a few months just to see how it goes, and if it does well I suppose it will be very beneficial. I also feed heavy, so it may be a bad thing for some of my tanks, but I suppose vacationing something in a scud infested tank for a few days could help to curb any issues like that.