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How do you get rid of scuds?


Crazyfishlady

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I spotted a very alien/strange creature in my snowball tank while taking a little video of the tank. I freaked when I saw it and stopped the video (I can try to download but it's kinda long).

 

I googled and found out it's a scud

 

1. How the heck did that thing get in there? I haven't put any new plants in for over a month

 

2. How do I get rid of it?

 

3. How dangerous is it to the tank?

 

I have yet to see it again but it is creeping me out knowing it is in there somewhere!!

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Try and net it out if you can before they multiply. I had them a while ago. I netted them out and haven't seen any more since. It took me a couple of weeks to get them out of my 4g tank. They like to hide in the plants. I chased them out with a chopstick and netted them. It probably took them a month to grow to where you can now see them. They've been known to devour baby shrimp.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Soothing said they have a craving for protien so they eat babies shrimps, I believe this to be true because I had scuds in my tiger tank and only one babies was left before I found out and put him in a scud free tank. Your best bet is to net them I constantly went to the tank looking for them they come out a lot during feeding and I usually see them when I turn the lights on trying to get away. They hide in rocks and if they get away I crush the rocks they go into kinda like squishing snails.

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grrrrr - ok... not going to be easy. I have a lot of plants, wood and rocks in that tank and that little creeper is the exact color of the adults (weird) alhtough a bit more fully white bodied. I have a TON of babies zipping everywhere so... this should be interesting... 

 

I wonder if this is the reason the snails keep dying in that tank???

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Are the snails smaller then the scuds?

The horned nerites were tiny but the zebra/tiger nerites were bigger and... my most recent mystery snail was definitely bigger and I found it shell up last night :(

 

I'm definitely starting to see the appeal of a bare bottom tank 

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not much you can really do besides adding a predator such as a fish, but often scuds/seed shrimp/etc are fast enough to hide in your soil. but thats where they typically live with fish we just dont see them out as much..

 

i dont think they necessarily eat baby shrimp I think they just out compete for food, when the baby passes from lack of nutrition they THEN eat the protein.

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:growl:  :bbq:   Scuds are a menace!   Once they are in your tank they breed in the soil and then you have hundreds of them.

They eat the food, kill the babies and generally make the shrimps very uncomfortable.  Yes they come on plants and sometimes I think they even might have eggs already in some of the soil we get in bags. 

 

The only way I rid my tank of them was doing a drastic measure....I netted all my shrimps, relocated them to another holding tank, then I put a Killifish or Betta in the tank, left if for a few days and walla.....no more scuds....they hunted and ate all of them.  I never saw another scud in that tank after that.  I put the shrimps back in, took out the Killie/Betta and life went on.  Only problem was my Killie kept looking at me as if to say......where's the smorgasboard?   I don't like this other food you are giving me, I want those

neat little flitty things...... :stuff:

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Monty - I have 2 bettas (in their own tanks) and I'm nearly at the point of trying that. I have yet to be able to hunt that nasty creature down and find it. The problem with netting all the shrimps is... they are breeding like rabbits. Another mama had her babies last night, 3 more are berried and I have TONS of babies (4 different sizes now) zipping around.

 

I would have to find a way to net them all, increase the temp to be safe for the betta... but my worry is that I have SO many babies in there ....

 

That and bettas stomachs are only about the size of their eyes so... 

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Yea, one of the bettas inhaled a BV shrimp (not current ones) when I didn't realize it was stuck on a net (long story). I couldn't believe he fit that shrimp in his mouth!! I didn't feed him for 2 days after. 

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I also tried putting an algae wafer inside a water bottle and tied a string to it, then left it laying down on its side in the tank.  Yes I did get a lot of scuds, but also some shrimps which I had to fish out and put back in the tank....this is a tedious process.  I used to suck the scuds up one by one with a turkey baster too....recon on spending a few hours doing that one!

 

Scuds like plant matter, so if you don't have a really planted tank, maybe take out all of the plants for a day

and try netting the scuds....they will be hopping around on the soil looking for food.  I kept mostly floating

plants, moss balls and a few java ferns, so I could remove them as I wanted too.

 

Unfortunately, once scuds are in your tank, it is virtually impossible to totally eliminate them.  Best case scenario

is that you deplete the population on a regular basis and hopefully you get all the females.  At least you will

make the tank a bit more comfortable for the shrimp. 

 

Ive seen scuds jump on adult shrimps and make them go crazy, so eliminating as many as you can on a regular basis might help to deplete the scud eggs, so your population will go down.

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So I have been debating this over and over in my head. I hate that those things are in there although I have yet to see another one anywhere. Granted, it is a heavily planted tank.

 

Since I don't think my betta is going to dig through the substrate to get them... I am contemplating starting a new tank. Possibly only put a small bit of sand, rather than gravel, literally a very small coating of it.

 

I would only put some moss, sparingly, though I would put more on the ledges that Han now has me addicted to :)

 

Moss don't need substrate, neos don't need active substrate, some rocks for biofilm... 

 

I have seen lots of tanks that are very sparse but it feels like I am robbing them of a fun, natural environment yet it seems the best solution. I could see things better and maybe scuds can't bury in a small layer of sand?

 

Thoughts?

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I keep my neos and tigers in just plain old aquarium natural gravel.  They are doing just fine.  I made a tree for them out of some spiderwood (that's what I call it) its used a lot in reptile tanks...looks like twisted arms all over.  I glued it to a piece of slate and wound some hornwort around it till it looked like a weeping willow.  The shrimps are all over it and hide out in it all the time.  Other than that, they have a lava rock with weeping moss tied to it and that's it.  No bugs!

 

I have never had much luck growing hornwort, but OMG this time I have tons of it.  It must be my T5HO light

that's over the 3 tanks that's making it grow like crazy.  I pulled out enough of it to FILL a 2.5 gallon tank....no kidding, and its very green.  I don't use ferts either in this tank, and actually in all my tanks the plants are

growing nutso.   Guess that light works :D

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Yea I think I definitely need to 'down size' the amount of stuff in there. Plus, thanks to greenteam, I have enough moss to do another tank and have that be the only plant in there :)

 

I use floramax as substrate in my betta tanks and the snowball tank. It's cheaper, doesn't affect ph and helps plants. Since I won't be doing that in the next one... I'm thinking sand and no new plants from here on out if at all possible.

 

I do soak my plants in no planaria for at least a full day but somehow those buggers got in there.

 

Just worried about yanking all those shrimp babies out and putting them in another tank. I guess it's do it now or start losing them to the scuds. I have no way to know if I have actually lost any since there are soooo many in there but sparse is definitely how I will go from now on, no matter how much I like the look

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