Given that my focus is invertebrates primarily shrimp and snails, I’m not sure why I thought it was a great idea to buy a starter colony of scud from an online retailer. They’re meant to serve as live food for fish and aquatic amphibians and such. They have become the bane of my aquatic experience. There are over a hundred species commonly called scud. I apologize but the seller didn’t list anything more specific than “Gammarus sp.”
I’m interested in some kind of corydoras, either regular size or miniature, to Hoover up these tiny terrors. I think the mouth of a dwarf or pygmy variety will be too small and they’ll only eat the smallest of scud. With the number of crevices, plants and other hiding places in the tank, I need a fish that can tackle any size scud. From my understanding (I briefly had pygmy corys in my early days), corydoras are often bottom feeders and my shrimp primarily hide at the masses of pearlweed growing from containers at the top and middle water layers. But the tank is only a 29gal long with a focus on shrimp (and 2 very happy random fancy male guppies, waiting out their days). I did have mystery snails but they were all pestered to death by the scud! I’m not particularly interested in the looks of Panda or Skunk corys. I like reddish corydoras. The only other fish I can think of would be a dwarf pea puffer but I could likely only have 1 due to their territoriality from what I’ve read and heard.
I have 1 African Dwarf Frog left in a different 15 gal who occasionally gets scud treats, but he’ll eat himself to death in no time in the 29 gal. And I’m hoping to avoid having salmonella in my main tank as much as I can.
For plants, my survivors are:
Bacopa caroliniana
Some type of rotala, red with high lighting
Pearlweed
Guppy grass
Common duckweed
I can’t remember how many species have been completely wiped out by them. All hair grass, palms/fronds, and carpeting plants are gone with the exception of a handful of subwassertang I inherited from a scud free tank and anubis that I rescued before the scud had a chance (neither appreciated the lighting I had at the time on my main tank). I rescued a handful of other species, and have successfully raised vallisneria in a cold water shrimp and against my will and careful precautions, scud tank.
Does anybody know what plants are considered more robust and durable? Better yet, do you have personal experience with plants that survive scud? Do you know of hungry small fish that have mouths big enough for scud? Do you have interest in having scud for your live