Scuds, Daphnia, Cherry Shrimp, Copepods: My aquatic food culture
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
- This is the food culture I keep in my fishroom to feed my fish. There is nothing special about the culture beyond what you see. All these get along fine and are all super productive. This is an item I usually have available for sale.
I used to think something was wrong with me as a kid, all my buddies had tanks and wanted big fish, tropical fish stores charged more for bigger fish, so they must be better. Me, I gravitated to the small, little tetras, danios, kuhli loaches, guppies. When I went to salt water tanks, I was more fascinated the micro creatures that lived in the live rock and sand than I was in the fish stock.
Then I got into scuba diving, other divers wanted to see the fish on the reefs and hoped to catch sight of large pelagic species on the walls and drop offs into the deep, while I found much more pleasure laying my self down in the sand of a reef and studying the tiny creatures that lived in the corral sand and silt. I was glad when I realized there is a whole sub-culture that enjoys watching and studying the world of micro life.
i'm also into small species, they looks good in any tank size and seeing them working makes me feel so relax
Swordtails are the best species ever, they breed a lot and theyre small
We would make great friends
Im your lost twin brother
My goodness I could watch this tank all day! Something about this tiny ecosystem is so beautiful. Love it!
It's the symbiosis.
It’s so calming and curious
Yeah this tank is fully fucking awesome. Like, we love a beautiful aquascape but this sheer unbridled aquatic lifeforce is so sick
I think you have not seen any tank from the ADA Lab.
Awesome ima try this with a 20 gal long cherry shrimp , snails , daphnia , scuds , black worms.
Just give them some cucumber....throws fork at them 🤣🤣
That's awesome! I went to collect some shrimp from a stream yesterday, but ended up with a whole bunch of other little creatures - mostly Daphnia, but also some stuff I don't know. I was wondering whether I should remove the others, but I think I'll just leave them and see if I can create something similar to what you have here. Unless I see something eating my Daphnia or shrimp.
Any stream or only some stream have it
@@SajSajidmk You can find them almost anywhere, but for best results you want places with aquatic plants, algae, or plant litter, like stagnant ponds or lower stream rivers. Obviously avoid polluted waters.
Wonderful video, and great how you show what gets along..and how easy it is to maintain. Love!
A cyclop bloom that came out of nowhere just wiped out my entire daphnia collony in 48 hours.
Sorry if this is a late comment, but did you ever find anymore daphnia? They tend to make resting eggs when conditions are unfavorable.
Update: Cyclops wiped out my small Moina Culture. Now I have a tank of cyclops.
@shawndoe2834 They are carnivorous. If they are kept in a tank that is too clean and have nothing to eat, they will attack the daphne. I saw them do it live and it's not a pretty sight. A few dozen cyclops completely destroyed the daphne population (thousands of individuals) in my culture in just 3 days. I managed to start a new culture from the last 10 survivors. The cyclops have returned (no way to get rid of them) but now with a gravel bottom that I VERY RARELY clean, they have something to occupy themselves and leave the daphnia alone.
@@JacobKernels This is not a problem for me. I live in the wild i just have to go outside to the nearest lake/pond in the summer and collect some more alive.
I also collected quite a few of these black eggs that look like apple seeds (just in case).
Last time I had a culture was by accident. I was bathing a piece of wood so that it would hold down to decorate one of my aquariums and I completely forgot about it for several weeks. When I came back there were about twenty adult daphneas swimming in the water. These eggs are really useful, imagine: I started by picking the branch from the snow and then I boiled it as best I could from the ends. There are still eggs that have survived and hatched.
Can't find daphnia in any pond or body of water in Washington State. I'm in grays harbor county and there are tons of lakes ponds and vernal pools.. I'm stumped..
Yeah me neither. I'm in SW Europe and I've found loads of stuff but no daphnia 😢
you can order eggs online or buy a live feedbag of them to start a culture too
try for more sunny areas with man made ponds
Hello, my friend.👋 I used a 5-gallon bucket all summer to grow big brine, & fish lice. Green water. Lord, it smells so terrible. U think I could keep a heated 10-gallon on a 4-season porch this winter? My 5-gallon bucket of “ candy” is for my puffer fish. I have the snails w/ the cherry shrimp in another tank, w/ 1 pelco. 🐡
Great and Simple
very cool
Very well done! Don't shrimps eat daphnia? Mine do.
I want to do just this!
This is so informative. I am going to be growing my own food cultures in the next day or two.. Should I add a small heater, and would a small dirted/sand amount on the bottom for the plants be a good idea. You did mention the plants so I just want to make sure this is correct for me to do!? Also I will have tiny snails as well for my betta tanks. I do have a lid with a light, do you suggest using the regular light or the blue light. Thank you so much, I would appreciate any info I might need. Kindly
Wonder how blackworm would do in that tanks? Thanks for sharing.
hey buddy, i was wondering if i could have daphnia and gammarus all together and you solve it for me :) thanks a lot! Love from Argentina!
What species of scud do you have? Some species are supposed to be harmful to neocaridina, so knowing which species can work together would be very helpful.
Which species of freshwater scuds, is safe for shrimps?
I need info from your experience
@Cleeon hyalella azteca, as far as i can tell. IDing a species is gonna be hard though
@@curvingfyre6810 oohh thanks, I feel really relieved😌.
In my case, I have that species only, Hyalella Azteca, and one of my aquarium dedicated for shrimp breeding, they're Hitchiked and now have around hundred of them inside, to be honest I'm panic.
I read many articles online about them attacking shrimps, but in my aquarium I'm observed the opposite fact, they're not, even the adult shrimps, sometimes, attacking them, the scuds just ignore shrimps, even ignore the seed shrimps/copepoda.
And from my observation, it's look like after booming, the hyalella Azteca population look decreasing, and replaced with many seed shrimp 🤔
I’ve been told scuds will go after baby shrimp?
To answer your question about Scuds with Shrimp, watch the video Phillips Fish Works made titled: Scuds in Your Planted Aquarium - Why We Love Scuds. It will answer everything you might wonder about scuds and shrimp and everything else under the sun. Amazing video. ua-cam.com/video/97GPtNkppEY/v-deo.html
Thanks for your suggestion, I'll look into it, need more clarification about freshwater scuds@@LL-oc1xw
So it’s ok to leave some sort of food in the tank 24/7 for them to eat. Never a time without food in the tank?
yes
is the sponge filter working? i'm assuming there's no need because of the massive amount of plant and daphnia which act as nitrate suckers
have you found that these creatures don't get along together like the skuds eating the shrimplets? also will skuds destroy planted tanks, if they arent being predated enough?
Yes they will eat plants, but they probably won’t do anything to shrimplets as long as there’s enough food. They don’t eat babies since they’re the same size, but they could compete for food
Everybody gets along without any issues . I have cultured like this for years. Scuds will nibble on a few soft plants, such as mosses, but are fine with most plants if kept fed. Many plants enjoy what the scuds do as they keep the plant leaves clean.
Does the sponge filter suck up baby scuds, daphnia etc.???
This is bad ass!! I definitely want to do this!! How many gallons??
How to you get aquatic plants and algae to grow without sun?
hes just dropped the fork along? roots
Cool, thanks for sharing! What's your water change schedule like on this culture?
Where is the leaf litter
Do you also have Moina? What is the Ph and how are the lights on? Do you feed green water?
Hi, Very interesting. Do you change the water at all.
Not much of it. I am always taking a cup or two from it when harvesting. If it gets too organic rich, I will vacuum the substrate for mulm and take a couple gallons of water out.
can I incorporate a copy of your tank in my sump's refugium? So that current will occasionally sweep them to main tank via return pump?
The scuds will gladly colonize a sump.
Can you mix daphnia with scuds? I have 2 10 gallons setup. 1 has daphnia currently but I am trying to find a nice complementary animal. I also have a few snails with them. I heard the scuds eat daphnia but I would think they should be fine as long as there's enough food in the tank for them. Would love to hear your thoughts.
I've had no trouble with gammarus gammarus and daphnia pulex. Can't speak for other species of scuds though.
I see that some of the hornwort has been chewed off, does it grow back?
Once I saw about 100 shrimp eating a sliver of wood, I think it was pine.
There was nothing on it, just wood.
There was biofilm on it, wood is great at growing biofilm.
How long do you leave food in there for then
I keep having fish hatch out in my scud tank. I have been wanting to get the daphnia in there also and keep some green water handy.
Is the filter still necessary? Isn't daphnia going to clear the algae and bacteria?
A filter isn't needed at all. If used, how they help is being host to it's own biome. That biome slowly gets ejected and then available to the daphnia. I prefer an indoor culture have a filter, but I don't think it matters much either way. If not used I prefer having an area for the biome that snails can't reach - such as mounding the gravel.
@@lifetimeaquarist Thank you very much for sharing your expertise!!
Hi! I have accidentally started a culture and I think I’m seeing a lot of seed shrimp. Is there an easy way to catch them to feed my other tanks?
this has inspired me to start my own food culture ✨but I accidentally started one and your video helped my identity what was living in my tank✨ sadly I also have detritus worms and those are nasty so I’m going to try to scoop some daphnia and a few scuds and start fresh in a new bucket
Are detritus worms harmful? I was thinking they would be good food for Corys and Swordtails.
@@elaineluikart5459not harmful, but some people dont like the look of them
Detritus worms are good!
@@samuelcontreras9248this, ignorance is astounding. detritus worms are highly beneficial and fish love eating them
What plants do you have floating?
Could you please tell me your lights schedule for this aquarium?
24/7 - fluorescent - low intensity
@@lifetimeaquarist Thanks good sir.
@@lifetimeaquarist I'm wondering if a higher intensity light on 24/7 would produce an abundance of algae (good food for them while also absorbing nitrogens and phosphates), kinda like a refugium.
How about the water temperature? Do you put an heater in the tank to maintain the constant temperature?
Daphnia can be found under ice, they don’t need heating. The same can be said for scuds and cherry shrimp. You heard that right, cherry shrimp are cold hardy.
I was told you can't use tap water for daphnia is that not true?
It depends on what your municipality adds to the water. We do water changes on our daphnia cultures with water straight from the tap. It doesn't bother them at all.
You can, just has to be dechloroinated and aged
Do you recommend scuds in a planted community tank with nano fish? Or will the scuds eat the living plants?
Scuds eat baby shrimp so that's something to keep in mind
I’m planning a hybrid Dutch style aquarium with hard scape and heavy plants, I’m hoping that will be enough for some shrimp babies to make it long enough and scuds to colonize along with daphnia
@@thebeigesheep6132 As long as you have fish to control scuds, that won't be a big problem. Unless you want shrimp to breed. Cause the strong and smart shrimplets will still survive. Scuds are kinda considered a pest in shrimp-only aquarium.
Do you know if the scats eat the baby shrimp?
As long as being fed all is good. Stop feeding a scud culture and they will go destroy everything organic.
Dang bro those shrimp ( even tho probably still reproducing) gotta have a miserable life. I'm no hippy or nothing i fish, hunt, have feeder shrimp, guppy, and convict chiclid (they reproduce with little to no effort) to feed certain fish in my 47 tank fish room to help get them ready to spawn. But i dunno if your unaware or don't care but scuds will attack female shrimp after realizing Fry or after molting their shell. .o have that many scuds in with a handful of shrimp is just not cool man. I'm no one to tell ANYONE how to do there hobby but if you like neo shrimp to buy a cheap 10g tank and raise the shrimp in it. Plus you'll have waaaay more bedding success that way. But you do you, just an opinion from a stranger lol. Good luck
What is the mop for?
I keep killifish and use it for collecting eggs but have found scuds love hanging out in it.
i heard scuds prey on cherry shrimp
What exactly is a clay based substrate?
You worry much about algae growth in this culture?
Algae is actually super good for the health of your tanks, however it’s just unsightly lol
So it’s ok to leave some sort of food in the tank 24/7 for them to eat. Never a time without food in the tank?
Exactly! 👍💚😆