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Scuds are a fantastic, high protein live food for your aquarium fish.
These little guys are favorites of Sara’s scarlet gem badis, bettas, gouramis, pea puffers, and platies. We have yet to meet any nano to small sized predatory fish that doesn’t enjoy eating scuds.
Scuds range in size based on age. They can be anywhere from less than 1 mm as hatchlings, to just over 1 cm as adults.
If breeding your own live food is your goal, scuds are much easier to culture than daphnia! One order of 250 scuds should be plenty to start your own culture, and they’ll eat almost anything you feed them.
Like shrimp, they do need a good source of calcium to ensure healthy molting. I use our product, Magic Minerals in my scud culture tanks about once a month.
Scuds are also an excellent microfauna to complete your aquariums natural ecosystem. These little amphipods are detritovores and scavengers, good for eating leftover fish food, dead plant matter, breaking down waste, and eating anything that may have died in the aquarium.
However, if introduced to an aquarium with too few predators, they will overrun the tank. They reproduce very, very quickly!
If left unchecked, they will devour your plants, especially mosses. In great enough numbers, they will also eat smaller snails (like ramshorns, trumpets, etc.) and baby shrimp. Scuds will even pick on big snails and anything that doesn’t eat them.