Larvae are dying.

[NNixson]

My eggs hatch normally, and I start feeding with the brine shrimp that I raise myself. I rinse them well before feeding twice daily. 2x daily water change and bubblers in the tubs. After about 2 weeks on brine shrimp (when they are a bit bigger) I start daphnia. They continue to grow for the 1st week or so and then 5-6 dead, so I panic and start adding brine shrimp again. Within a week or 2, they are all dead. It's frustrating and heartbreaking. I have managed to raise 3 to adulthood. I am determined to make this work. I worry that to start them on Daphnia right from the beginning they won't eat them due to size of the larvae/daphnia ratio. Am I wrong? I have researched and read everything I can. Any help is appreciated.

 

[jackmannish]

I've never fed daphnia but my understanding is that they're meant to be used at the early larval stage, similar to BBS. It sounds to me like you actually need to be switching to a more substantial food source at that point in time instead of switching them to daphnia. I transition mine to finely-chopped frozen blood worms, around the time they start developing front legs. When they're newly hatched they need a live food source thus why it's important to feed BBS or daphnia, but past a certain point they will accept non-live food.

 

[NNixson]

I've never fed daphnia but my understanding is that they're meant to be used at the early larval stage, similar to BBS. It sounds to me like you actually need to be switching to a more substantial food source at that point in time instead of switching them to daphnia. I transition mine to finely-chopped frozen blood worms, around the time they start developing front legs. When they're newly hatched they need a live food source thus why it's important to feed BBS or daphnia, but past a certain point they will accept non-live food.

Thanks again for the info. They start off doing GREAT! and then slip away. Maybe I am just not rinsing the BBS well enough. I assume once the damage is done there is no coming back from that?

 

[jackmannish]

If you weren't rinsing them thoroughly enough you'd probably get them dying off a lot more quickly than you currently are. It wouldn't make sense that it wouldn't start happening until they were a couple weeks old.

 

[NNixson]

If you weren't rinsing them thoroughly enough you'd probably get them dying off a lot more quickly than you currently are. It wouldn't make sense that it wouldn't start happening until they were a couple weeks old.

hmmm?
So frustrating!