# Live food for marine fish.......scuds?



## Crayon

Hey all,
I have a fish that will be arriving hopefully within the next six months that needs to be fed live food. To begin with.
I’m not crazy about the idea of feeding it live fish, so I’m wondering about what other options and the potential risk, benefit is.
Ideally I would love something I could breed, so I don’t loose a food source. Was thinking about scuds and wondering how big some scuds get to.
I know nothing about scuds, so help me out. Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated. Can scuds live in saltwater?
I know someone who kept this fish and fed it reject baby clown fish.
I know people who feed their frog fish small chromis. Or mollies.
Would like to avoid the fish eating fish thing, but maybe that’s my only option.
Ideal food size would be about 8mm to 12mm I think.


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## tom g

*Live food*

Black worms.... they don't live in salt water but stimulate feeding and u can gut load them with food ...


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## corpusse

You're mostly mentioning fish but then mention a size of 8-12mm, other than reject clownfish which might actually be your best bet, I'm not sure of any other fish in this size range you can get.

Are the fish you are getting fish eaters in the wild or do they eat other things?

Live mysid are really hard to culture, and harder to get in Canada but there are still places in the US they can be ordered from. From what I understand Reed Mariculture no longer ships them to Canada (they don't actually come from them but rather a lab that uses them for some sort of testing), but there are still other sources. On the smaller end of your food size, and difficult to culture yourself but a very good source of nutrition.


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## Crayon

I know I’m being cryptic as I really don’t want to post what fish it is, sorry. It’s a bit of a story.
Thanks for the comments so far.
I don’t think black worms are going to do it. This fish eats small fish in the wild, so the worms might just swim by him and do nothing to interest him. Think grouper style fish with a big mouth.
Mysis might be a good idea and I can access Reed Mariculture, but the mysis from them are 1.00 each USD before shipping which puts them in the expensive side of a food source.
Wild caught mysis are much cheaper but potentially disease carriers. Not a good idea, I don’t think.
Captive raised small mollies might be the way to go. Cheap, will acclimate to salt water, potentially disease free.
Still hoping someone can tell me if scuds can be done in salt or brackish water and how big they get. I know nothing about them.


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## Tenurepro

Curious curious... is it cartilaginous


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## carl

I have lots of scuds, they live for a few minutes in saltwater or a bit longer in brackish


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## Crayon

Tenurepro said:


> Curious curious... is it cartilaginous


No.....I'm not that crazy.


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## Crayon

carl said:


> I have lots of scuds, they live for a few minutes in saltwater or a bit longer in brackish


How big do scuds get, Carl?


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## carl

About a quarter of an inch


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## Sea MunnKey

What's a "scud"? My apology as I'm not a fish guy ...


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## carl

Scuds are freshwater gammarus shrimp that are easy to culture and make excellent live food


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## Moh

just say what fish it is maybe then people can give better ideas....no matter what fish u get in this hobby someone is going to say something....and if it were up to those people we wont be keeping half of the fish we now keep...if u are willing to do the best in caring for a type of fish thats hard to keep go for it man and dont worry too much about what people say...so out with the name...i like to see the crazy things people keep....and saltwater is the place to find crazy.


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## twobytwo

Would ghost shrimp work? I bought a bunch at Big als and acclimated them to SW. you can toss them right in but if they don't get eaten right away, they'll die quick. My tusk and trigger went nuts for them.

Are we allowed to guess what fish it is? I saw a video recently of a fish eating malformed clownfish so maybe I know what it is???


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## Crayon

twobytwo said:


> Would ghost shrimp work? I bought a bunch at Big als and acclimated them to SW. you can toss them right in but if they don't get eaten right away, they'll die quick. My tusk and trigger went nuts for them.
> 
> Are we allowed to guess what fish it is? I saw a video recently of a fish eating malformed clownfish so maybe I know what it is???


I'm thinking ghost shrimp might be the solution. How did you acclimate to salt water Noah?


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## twobytwo

Crayon said:


> I'm thinking ghost shrimp might be the solution. How did you acclimate to salt water Noah?


I think I filled a 10g with about 1/3 freshwater and put the shrimp in. Did a slow drip of Saltwater for a day to get the tank 2/3 full. Emptied half, and started over. Did that for about 3 or 4 days till it was pretty close to my tank salinity.

You could probably do it quicker but I wanted to be safe.

My fish literally went Bananas for them. So I had to decide if I wanted to dump all the shrimp in at once, or just toss a couple in every few days as a treat.


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## Crayon

twobytwo said:


> I think I filled a 10g with about 1/3 freshwater and put the shrimp in. Did a slow drip of Saltwater for a day to get the tank 2/3 full. Emptied half, and started over. Did that for about 3 or 4 days till it was pretty close to my tank salinity.
> 
> You could probably do it quicker but I wanted to be safe.
> 
> My fish literally went Bananas for them. So I had to decide if I wanted to dump all the shrimp in at once, or just toss a couple in every few days as a treat.


So why did they die when you put them in the tank? And what did you feed the ghost shrimp while you kept them. It would be good to gut load, not just keep them alive.


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## corpusse

I don't know if this will apply to fish and you probably could do a better job gut loading them then I did, but way back when I kept dwarf cuttlefish I had some issues with ghost shrimp. I usually fed them shore shrimp. They looked exactly like ghost shrimp but they were full marine and require no acclimation and lived for months without issue. You of course will have to order them and they are more expensive then ghost shrimp.

To save some costs I fed them ghost shrimp from big al's. The ones that ate ghost shrimp did not grow as big and lived somewhat shorter lives then the ones that ate shore shrimp. In the old days they use to always say don't feed freshwater creatures to marine, but considering PE mysis are freshwater and one of the best foods out there that pretty much throws that theory out.

Here is where I got them from 
http://www.aquaculturestore.com/Shore-Shrimp.html


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## Crayon

Thanks Corpusse,
I was reading a post from Richard Ross on his website and oddly enough, he said the exact same things as you just said about freshwater fish/shrimp not being a good food source for saltwater predators or cuttlefish.
I'm going to check out the shore shrimp thing, too. I have a link to a company in Maine that can collect feeder shrimp. It might be possible to find someone on the east coast of Canada.
Really hope this new fish will eat Larry's frozen fish food. Something a lot less stressful about feeding frozen food than live food to a fish.

Check out this link to Richard Ross comments:
http://packedhead.net/2014/dr-seuss-eats-nemo/


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