Those baby crayfish... aren't!

[gcvmom]

Though they are closely related to crayfish, it turns out they are actually called "scuds" : scud

How on earth they made their way into a plastic pond on a second floor balcony is beyond my understanding! All I can think is that perhaps we got some hitchhikers when we put our old crayfish in there last year...

 

[Hound dog]

Umm. What is a scud? Never heard of one. And yeah, you probably got hitchhikers.

 

[gcvmom]

Click on the link at the end of the first sentence in my post.

 

[Hound dog]

Hmm. Well, I swear I learn new things all the time here. lol

 

[donna723]

They look just like little shrimp! Which reminds me of something really silly, a real "blast from the past"! Is anybody else here old enough to have read comic books as a kid, the ones that had all the neat stuff that you could send away for advertised on the inside covers? Things like smoke bombs, itching powder, and the x-ray glasses that let you "see through walls", and of course the ever-popular SEA MONKEYS! They were advertised as "instant pets" ... you just add water and they come alive! The ads showed these little creatures wearing clothes and doing human-like things like riding tiny bicycles. I desperately wanted those when I was seven or eight - my mother always said, "No"! Turns out that what you really got for your 25 cents was brine shrimp eggs! Apparently they are like tiny little shrimp ... and the eggs can be completely dried for long periods of time, then when water is added, they re-hydrate and continue to develop, hatching in to tiny little shrimp! So apparently what you have is some species that does the same thing! Have you checked on the bottom to see if there are any little hats and coats or little bitty bicycles?

 

[pajamas]

You wouldn't believe how many of us are that old

Huck has had sea monkeys - loves them!

 

[susiestar]

Sea Monkeys were cool!!!

When husband and I met he worked in a water quality lab and one of his jobs was to make sure the fish and brine shrimp were happy and breeding. They needed the brine shrimp to feed the fish and the fish to have babies to do the testing on.
The first time my Dad asked me what husband did I told him husband was a "fish pimp". I didn't say much more but the LOOK on Dad's face was PRICELESS!!!!!

 

[buddy]

Yuck, ugly suckers... I hate shrimp but Q loves it. gonna keep them? maybe make scud soup?

 

[donna723]

I love to EAT shrimp but they have to be neatly cleaned and breaded. I can't stand to even look at them if they still look like actual shrimp with all those little legs - they look too much like big bugs.

 

[donna723]

I won't claim to under stand actual crayfish either! When I lived in the country we were surrounded by woods and hills on three sides and a dry creek bed ran just inside the woods on one side along the yard. The only time there was water in this creek bed was after a really heavy rain and it could be completely dry for weeks or even months at a time. But you could go out there the day after a heavy rain when instead of the rushing water, it was just several little shallow pools of water, and there would be crayfish swimming around! Where the heck did they come from? This little creek bed was a long distance away from the bigger creek across the street that it drained in to. Do they walk across the street and through the yard? Do the eggs stick to the rocks or tree roots and then hatch when the creek is running again? Who knows!

 

[Hound dog]

donna they may burrow down deep where there is still some water left in the bed.........or eggs could hatch given the right circumstances.

I love shrimp.......only way I don't care much for it is grilled, it tends to be tough.

I love crab. I could myself sick on both crab and lobster. And all 3 actually have an insect sort of look to them............I just don't care cuz I like to eat them too much. lol

 

[ThreeShadows]

gcvmom, I suspect that a wading bird might have picked the sticky eggs up on its legs and brought them to your water. Last Summer we noticed a school of small fish in our pond. They're not the koi fish we had bought. We're hoping they're not predators of koi!

 

[gcvmom]

They are really tiny, so you'd need several THOUSAND to make a meal. But no, we won't be eating them! I've got some in a small water barrel with mosquito fish (which might eat them anyway), and then whatever was still burrowed into the pond filter went back into the pump box, so if they survive, so be it. And if not, oh well!

It's still a mystery how they got there in the first place!

 

[gcvmom]

Oh, and yes, I had Sea Monkeys as a kid, and my kids have had them, too. We have a couple of large salt water lakes in our state that are full of them!