No More filters

[aquaarche]

I have found that if your system is organic and you are not using gravel or any other medium only water float beds then you can add Grammarus to your sump tank and grow beds and they will eat up all your fish waste. eliminating the need for filters once they establish themselves. They do not harm the plants. You can find them under rocks in creeks and steams.

here are some pictures of them. they are called "Scuds", "water fleas" and "water lice" the last two names are also names of other types of Crustaceans.





go here to read about them
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gammarus and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scud_%28animal%29

They do use oxygen so add more air to your grow beds. Also as they grow and shed their skin or die they naturally add calcium to the system and help to maintain a 7.0 pH in your system.

I will add some to my gravel bed system to see how they work in gravel. I hope they will help eliminate the waste in the gravel as that will eliminate the need to clean the gravel.

I am also hoping to add fresh water prawns to our water float beds and see how they do.

[RS_]

Hi Aquaarche,

I have Garmmrus Scuds in my System, they are all throughout my system in the GB gravel and ST too, and they keep everything very clean, i have not had to back flush my biofilter barrels in about 8 mo or so... they look like your first Pic. I have also had Water Fleas (Daphnia) in my system back in the beginning when the water went Pea Soup Green, and they cleared up the algae in about 2 weeks after they showed up..... I find them every once and a while now......

RS

[keith_r]

i've been trying to find some for my system.. scuds that is

[jcx]

I found a web site selling all kinds of handy inverts, never ordered here so I can't say anything about the service.

http://www.aquaculturestore.com/fwinverts.html

[badflash]

If you go down to just about any local creek, find still places along the bank where leaves collect. Scook up a bunch of the leaves and muck. You have loads of scuds for free.

[jcx]

^^ I think I get some when I collect water plants in the Sacramento river.

[aquaarche]

I went down today to find some in our local creek here and low and behold I was able to get about 20 pieces of fresh water prawn fry. I think I got some water fleas too but it was hard to tell.

Getting fresh water prawn fry is expensive even here but the creek was full of them.

I will go to another place to find some slower moving water with more debris laying around.

It was a good day today sunny and the water was cool

[keith_r]

everything is still pretty frozen up here! i did find daphnia locally, will probably pick some up friday, along with a few apple snails

[JCO]

A word of warning..!

Anytime you get anything from the wild (creeks, rivers, ponds etc.) you take the chance of introducing something into your tank/system you don't want, leeches for example.

Years ago I collected some ghost shrimp from a local creek here in Florida and thought I had a new species because they had tiny black specks on them. Then the specks started disappearing from some of the shrimp and moving around on some of the others.

They turned out to be baby leeches....hundreds of them. I had to down the tank and sanitize it before I would take the chance of putting anything else into it..l

Leeches are not the only critters you can get....one of the worst for small fish and fry is the dragonfly nymph. The are voracious eaters and can devastate a tank of fish or fry in a short time and they are near impossible to find in a tank. The don't move around a lot. The just stay in one spot and wait for the fish/fry to swim by and they grab them with Praying Mantis like front legs and eat them alive.

Just a heads up for the outdoor collectors..!

[jcx]

I'm going down to a creek today and see what I can find. I'm going to set up what I find in a 2.5 gal water jug and see what grows.