PDONTnAMBY
Member
I'll try to keep this brief. Hopefully the pictures are helpful, but if better-lit pictures or a video of their behavior would be helpful let me know.
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Two CB spring salamander larvae I purchased from a user here last spring are floating, head-upward and right-side-up to sideways (see pictures). Both received large meals of frozen bloodworms I think two days ago (Tuesday 2-Feb) and then received a medium-sized meal of frozen bloodworms yesterday.
For the time that I've had them they've been kept alone in roughly two-gallon shoeboxes. They do not appear to have generalized swelling or tissue edema, and to my very untrained eye their gills and viscera look normal (aside from a lot of partially-digested food and poop). While they're generally floating pretty still, they do occasionally try to swim to the bottom and they were active and responsive when I moved their containers.
Beyond this makeshift "fridging," is there anything else that I can and should do for them? Thanks for any help you can offer!
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Two CB spring salamander larvae I purchased from a user here last spring are floating, head-upward and right-side-up to sideways (see pictures). Both received large meals of frozen bloodworms I think two days ago (Tuesday 2-Feb) and then received a medium-sized meal of frozen bloodworms yesterday.
For the time that I've had them they've been kept alone in roughly two-gallon shoeboxes. They do not appear to have generalized swelling or tissue edema, and to my very untrained eye their gills and viscera look normal (aside from a lot of partially-digested food and poop). While they're generally floating pretty still, they do occasionally try to swim to the bottom and they were active and responsive when I moved their containers.
- They do not have any substrate or, I believe, anything else in their containers that they could swallow to cause impaction.
- Their diet consists of frozen bloodworms, earthworms, and locally-sourced scuds (though of late it has been heavily biased toward frozen bloodworms). They are generally fed every third day or every other day; it was an unusual (and looking back, questionable) decision to feed them two days in a row.
- Their water is bottled spring water (which I've confirmed from the supplier is in fact directly from a spring and not chlorinated or anything), with about 25% changes weekly and regular top-offs of evaporated water with distilled. I don't have any water testing kits available at the moment, and I've not had any issues with water quality to date, but to be safe I replaced about 25% of their water with water from other tanks whose animals are thriving.
- Their water is aerated through an air hose without a bubble stone. I did notice that the air hose in each of their containers was submerged but not producing visible bubbles; is it possible that it could have instead been supersaturating the water with oxygen? That doesn't seem likely but I'm hardly an expert on fluid dynamics.
Beyond this makeshift "fridging," is there anything else that I can and should do for them? Thanks for any help you can offer!
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