Hyalella azteca, Scuds
$45.00 – $80.00
Description
Hyalella azteca, also known as Scuds, is a shrimp-like crustacean. It is an easy to culture live food that is an excellent size for many larger tropical fish. Even adult guppies can eat scuds. Cichlids and many killifish love them. This crustacean reaches about 1cm (0.4 in.). This shrimp-like, freshwater crustacean lives on decaying plants and detritus also eating algae and other microorganisms. It is gray to green in color. There are various species in North America, Europe and Asia.
This live food species is an excellent live food for most large tropical fish. It has the advantage of surviving aquarium conditions indefinitely so that it can be fed in abundance without fear of water fouling (do not, however, feed too many without adequate aeration since this organism will compete with fish for oxygen). This species survives happily in aquarium quality water. It can tolerate temperatures as low as 0°C (32°F) and high as 35°C (95°F) but prefers temperatures ranging from 20-30°C (68-86°F). pH is not important. Culture containers (the author prefers 32 gallon plastic trash cans, preferably yellow or white colored) should be aerated and provided a good food source, such as plant cuttings or tree leaves.
Culturing scuds is simple in any container that can hold water. The author uses plastic garbage cans. Culture instructions follow:
1) Fill a plastic garbage can or an aquarium with aged water. Place about 5cm (2 inches) of dried leaves. Most tree leaves are good, but you should avoid oak leaves. Dried mulberry leaves are excellent. Place the container is a sunlit location. Aerate the water lightly. Scuds can survive winters outside in most of North America, but reproduce best at 20-30°C (68-86°F).
2) Add a starter culture of Hyalella azteca; a few dozen will be enough.
3) Scuds feed on rotting leaves and microorganisms take grow on any surface. Provide adequate surface area to increase the population size by placing rolled up plastic screening in the culture container. The author uses plastic coated water cooling pads.
4) Within four weeks there will be enough scuds to harvest. Harvest by netting them with a fish net or by picking up the plastic screening or cooling pads and shaking over a bucket.
5) Feed the culture with additional leaves as they are consumed or decompose. Periodic, partial water changes are beneficial.
6) Cultures are long-lasting and sub-culturing is necessary only when production declines. Nevertheless, it is wise to maintain a replicate culture in case of a disaster (the author has lost outside cultures to neighbor’s herbicide poisoning).
One culture is approximately 1000 Hyalella aztecaand a double culture is approximately 2000 Hyalella azteca.
Joshua (verified owner) –
Hello,
I have been ordering/growing Scuds for sometime now and every once in a while i add a new batch to the mixture to freshen things up, but prices are ridiculous.
This, by far, is one the cheapest people i have ever met and i was very worried ‘You get what you pay for’ would bite me in the butt, so here is my review:
I ordered 2000 Scuds for $60 + shipping and easily got more then that, the issue i had is you can tell they just scoop whatever is in their pond into the bag, and hiding in the layer of soil on the bottom was pond snails, panaria and mosquito larva, plus whatever hasn’t come out of hiding so far. For me this inst an issue since i have a Scud tank and i dont care if it gets over run by pests and since none of those are harmful to my fish they just add to the value, more things to reproduce!
Also. i ordered some some Naja grass for my scud tank for $15. What i recieved was extremly above my expectations of how much i would get, it was a crazy amount and i dont know what to do with it, but, once again we had a lot of carry ons including a CRS (Crystal Red Shrimp) and a dead guppy.
Overall I’m happy with the product and will order from the company again, just wish they put more of a heads up about the extra passengers!
charles –
Our scuds are raised indoor in vats in our recirculating system, which is an ecosystem. We place “gunk” from the bottom of the vat in the bag along with some hornwort to provide food and cover for the scuds because they seem to ship better that way. Planaria, which can’t survive in fish vats because they are eaten, are unavoidable in rich vats. Pond snails? Probably. Like I said it’s an ecosystem. Mosquito larvae I’m surprised about since the vats are aerated and have water flowing in continuously causing lots of water movement. Mosquitos don’t like to lay egg rafts in moving water.
The guppy was a mistake. The vat I took the Najas from also houses Red Cherry Shrimp. I didn’t bother to purge them except by a quick shake.
I’m glad that you are happy overall. In order to keep costs, and therefore prices, low, we can’t exclude some “extra passengers.”
Jessica (verified owner) –
I was originally going to order 2 starter cultures, but had sticker shock at the shipping cost. So I ordered one starter culture and hoped it would have enough to stock everything. I have two 55 gallon barrels and two 10 gallon tanks to stock. I’m hoping they can survive in the barrels over the winter outside. If they can’t I’ll have the tanks inside to repopulate.
Imagine my shock when I got an email less than 3 hours later that my order has already shipped via FedEx. That sure took the sting of the shipping charge out a bit. Amazon can’t even get that done! :) Then of course I had to scramble to get the tanks and barrels ready. I had expected it would take longer than 24 hours to get here.
Then being aware of the other review here, I expected some debris in with the scuds. I poured them all into a gallon pitcher and added a new scoop to each 10 gallon tank. Then moved outside, scooped down at the bottom of the pitcher and expected lots of debris with some scuds. NOPE it was dark and looked like there was gunk, but they were actually all moving and squirming scuds! So many that they looked like dirt and stuff. I had plenty to stock everything and even toss some extras into other fish tanks. I’m super excited to get this food going for all my tanks. Hatching brine shrimp is hit or miss for me. Daphnia has been an utter failure. Scuds should be easy enough that I can handle this! <3 I expected some snails and other extra passengers, but the scuds were clean and very lively! Thank you so much!
charles –
Jessica,
The scuds often cluster together in the bottom of the bag, making them look like a mass of debris. Scuds are very easy to culture. Good luck with yours!
Charles
Heather (verified owner) –
I have ordered several times, and each time I am never disappointed. Great engaging and KNOWLEDGEABLE customer service.
Austin (verified owner) –
I ordered a double culture of scuds and received way more than expected! The scuds look great and my fish are loving the live food. My only question is that I received 9 fry in my order and I wish I knew their species.
Charles Clapsaddle –
Austin,
Those fry are likely feeder guppies. Our cultures have been colonized by feeder guppies, probably through hornwort we add to the colonies for scud food.
By the way, I’m trying to understand our systems. Did you see this response as an email as well as on the website?/
Charles
Charles
Austin (verified owner) –
I only saw the response on the website and thank you for the identification.
Ameen (verified owner) –
Got these more than 10x times, always excellent, the best I have found online!
Charles Clapsaddle –
Ameen,
Thank you. We try to produce and ship a good product.
Charles
Judy Gagnon (verified owner) –
I am so pleased with my scuds order. They are very lively Lil buggers and are doing great! So many extras and the hornwort order was more than what I expected gave them a cleaning and in the tanks they went.
Great people to do business with.
Thank you
Charles Clapsaddle –
Judy, Thank you for your kind words. Good luck with your scuds.
Charles
Mara Mersai –
I’ve been trying to research about plankton, as I’m studying water quality, and doing water quality testing on the Green-Duwamish. Then including this with biological indicators, mostly with zooplankton and phytoplankton. I’m just looking into relationships with skuds and pH, if one is increases, then the other does too. Would you know any about that?
Charles Clapsaddle –
Mara,
I’m sorry for the tardy response. I just saw this message.
Our scuds seem to do best in hard, alkaline water. Our water is 285 ppm calcium carbonate with pH 8.3 to 8.5. That said, I have raised them in rainwater successfully.
Charles
Jackalyn Milby (verified owner) –
Love! Such an amazing sustainable food source!!!
Charles Clapsaddle –
Jackalyn,
Scuds are the most reliable live food I’ve raised.
Charles
Mark Wagner –
Are there different species of scuds. I would like to put scuds in our high elevation lake in Washington state, the lake is ice covered much of the year, and has cold water into the summer. The lake gets warm enough to swim in only during July through mid August, even at that it is rather cool.
If your scuds are not suitable for that climate, can you suggest where I can find the right ones?
Thank you.
Charles Clapsaddle –
Mark,
Here’s a link to a blog I wrote about the classification of scuds: https://goliadfarms.com/update-on-gammarus-identification/.
The upshot is there are probably many species of scuds. Our scuds have been shipped to the northern tier of States and have been successful. They survive and reproduce in our winters but reproduce faster in our warmer greenhouse water. I do recommend using local populations if you can. Scuds can be collected using aquarium nets swept through marginal plants. They are easy to culture in large numbers in tubs starting from just a few of them. Their offspring can then be stocked in your lake. I did once find a vendor in Minnesota offering their local scud but can’t find them now.
Charles
LA (verified owner) –
I ordered 2000 scuds to feed my pea puffers over the 10 days I’m going to be out of town. (And to hopefully start my own culture.) Shipping was delayed through no fault of the seller, but he was very communicative and they ended up being delivered with a couple hours to spare. The “grossness” that you get with everything is perfect for raising your own live fish food. For the price, it really can’t be beat. I’m very happy with my purchase and the customer service included and would recommend.