this is my first time posting here so i apologize if this isn’t the right place to ask about these cuties!
we had this adorable hitchhiker on our plants and want to keep him as a pet! the second picture is his temporary enclosure in a small lowe’s bucket. we’ve named him rice and want to set up the best enclosure we can. so of course i have lots of questions as it’s kind of hard to find out how to care for a lone pet scud that isn’t meant to be fish food.
so one question is should we get another scud for his quality of life? or could we get a small shrimp species to put with him? i just don’t want to be unable to differentiate him from the other scud OR have him eaten by shrimp. so what’s best? also what plants do they like? we plan to get leaf litter, java moss and small driftwood pieces for him but otherwise we’re not sure. definitely sand for him and some rocks. anything else though? i want rice to be happy and healthy for the rest of his time here with us! any and all advice is appreciated!!
Posted by Kooky_Instruction392
6 Comments
Tiniest piece of algae wafer cut up maybe
Give him a quarter of a leaf. Or a casaurina cone or something.
I put some in a fish bowl with some plant clippings and bladder snails. They lived for two and a half years before I accidentally killed them by putting treated wood in the bowl. They were fun to watch and lived off the mulm that built up from the plants that died.
Get some shrimp snow. It doesn’t spoil the water and he can feast of that for a week. He’ll nibble on any plants you give him too. Mine go crazy for dried mulberry leaf, or the hair algae I pull out of my main tank.
If you feed him lots of green stuff his tummy will start looking green! He’ll get surprisingly big too – bigger than baby shrimp from Neocaridina!
I don’t know if they get lonely. If you get shrimp friends for him he shouldn’t get eaten (as long as it’s not a predatory shrimp). And as long as there is enough food, neither will be out competed.
I do love the little dudes! Tiny, little shrimp that they are. Unfortunately my Gudgeon love hunting live food, and I love my Gudgeon more than I love my scuds.
If there was ever an appropriate way to stock a “betta cube” type tank, this would be it.
I’d set up a 1 or 2 gallon betta tank that has an LED light, put sand on the bottom, and add an Anubias Nana plant (or several of them) mounted to a little chunk of mopani wood, as those are small, grow slowly, and don’t need much light. Maybe add a few stones for him to explore in.
His bioload is so small that the anubias would do the job of handling his ammonia so long as he isn’t overfed. An air stone on the lowest possible setting could maintain adequate gas exchange.
Drop in one nerite snail to keep the glass clean.
What a cool idea! I’ve found scuds in my tanks before and always tried to offer them plenty of spots to hide from my fish and hope they make it, it didn’t even occur to me to give them their own home.
I’m no expert on them, but from my other aquarium knowledge, here’s what I can suggest: I agree with the other comments about leaf litter, and I think some live plants would do well too. I’d put in a nice mix of slow growing lovely plants like Anubias (Nana are my favorite sub type) and Cryptocoryne, and Juncus Repens or Amazon Swords could be a nice background too, depending on the size of your tank. And definitely subwassertang and moss (Christmas or Java maybe), a mix like this will provide good variety and hiding places. I have to assume they have almost no bioload, so you don’t *need* the fast-growing, nitrate-guzzling plants like vals, pogostemons, etc.; not that they would hurt but you could get overrun and lose sight of him. Consider the size of the tank you end up with and your local water parameters too. Oh, and floaters would be great, check out water lettuce or frog bit, both get nice long roots that hang down into the water column. All of the things I’m recommending are easy care, no CO2 or anything special required. I’d Google “slow growing aquarium plants” to see about others available in your area. I also order from AquaticMotiv and BucePlant when buying online.
Scuds seem very hardy from my experience, so I’m sure that Rice will be very happy in his new setup. The only other advice I can think of is you’d probably do well to put pantyhose over the end of your siphon when doing water changes. Best of luck, post updates as he grows and thrives 😊