Scuds as food

[tcyiu]

Has anyone fed scuds to discus???

I didn't know what a scud was until just now. I had received 5 gallons of bioballs for free from someone on Craigslist. He had used them in a filter for an outdoor pond. As I was cleaning them, I noticed a bunch wigglies in the water. I captured a few and washed and dropped them in my discus tank. They seemed to eat them just fine. So I came in a did some research.

Apparently also called freshwater shrimp. The other pages seem to indicate that these are easy to raise. So my question is, has anyone here tried to raise them, and what do you think about using them for food??

Tim

[kaceyo]

Never heard of that kind of scud. I thought they were missles!!!

Kacey

[tcyiu]

Never heard of that kind of scud. I thought they were missles!!!

Kacey

Yeah me too. When I first started searching online, I was using search terms like freshwater copepods, cyclops, shrimp etc. It wasn't until I had done several searches that I started seeing images of critters that look like mine. Except that they referred to these creatures as "scuds."

They are not really shrimps, but rather related to pill bugs.

If you do a search for the term "freshwater scud" you'll see half the pages are from fly fisherman who specifically tie flies that look like these things. So my guess is that these are legitimate food stuff for fish. I did find a caveat that scuds are vectors for tape worms and other parasites. So one has to be careful.

I placed my batch of scuds in my hospital tank and turned off the heater. We'll see if these buggers start reproducing.

Tim

[ShinShin]

If you are raising them yourself indoors in a controlled enviroment, they ought to be fine as a food for your discus. If you are collecting them outdoors, you run the risk of inviting parasites into your tanks.

Mat

[tcyiu]

Well, I'm no good at raising scuds. I put them in my hospital tank with room temp water (they came from a pond and were used to cooler temps), with a small aquaclear running continuously, with lots of driftwood to hide in, flakes of tetra plant based flakes.

After a couple of weeks, the tank was devoid of life. All 50 or so scuds disappeared. I began to tear down the tank and found a few refugees in the filter floss. These animals came out of the bio balls that were in the pond. So I guess they need high water flow. Anyway, so much for my experiment in raising them. The few I dropped into the discus tank were snatched up with relish. It would have been cool to have another source of live food (other thna mosquito larvae).

Tim

[LizStreithorst]

They sound interesting. Sorry your experiment didn't work out.

Have you considered culturing red wigglers? They make a superbe live food.