Help! Babies not eating...

Hi, a friend gave me some eggs, and they started hatching a few days ago. Two hatched on Sunday, two on Tuesday, and seven today. So far, none have eaten anything. I have them in plastic cups and fed them live, hatched brine shrimp with no eggs.

The guide I said told me to wait until the yolk was gone, but I can't tell the difference. Is it normal for them to wait this long without eating? The seven from today should be ok, I guess, but what about the two guys from Sunday? Maybe they just hatched early?

They won't eat for a few days because of the yolk. You can see this as a little yellow strip on their belly. They should start eating within a few days, depending on how cold it is (colder = longer lasting yolk).

Ah Joan, thank you much for writing back. I do see a white-yellow ribbon but I thought it was their stomach/intenstines. This will turn clear or something when they are ready to eat? In the meantime I put a little brine shrimp with each, but I don't know how much to put. Probably there are about 20 shrimp swimming with each axolotl.

Keep offering food on at least a twice-daily basis, and they'll eat when they're ready. 20 per axolotl's a lot when they've just hatched, but offer them as much as they'll eat. Pretty soon they'll be pretty big and want a lot. Make sure you clean out the uneaten brine shrimp within a couple hours, or they'll die and foul the water.

Thank you again Joan. So, I use baster to put shrimp in, probably put a few in each clear plastic cup. But each axolotl still just sits, doesn't move. When yolk is gone, they will move to eat right away when food is given? Will I be able to tell they eat? I mean, can you see the little mouth open, etc.? Sorry for such silly question.

you should be able to see their little tummys take on a red glow from the brine shrimp

Akira, you want to wash the shrimp first with fresh water, as the brine can be overwhelming to the axolotls. At this stage, they really don't do much but sit there. They'll start moving around in a couple of days, and they'll start sitting upright (not laying on their side). You want to keep a fairly high concentration in the cup they're in, so the axolotls can find the food. And like Sharn said, you'll see the orange in their bellies.

I didn't wash specifically, but I will from now on. Until now I extract some from 2L bottle and put in a cup filled with water, wait for settle, take 1oz of water and shrimp into cup with axolotl.

Still no one seems to eat, but no one is dead yet either. I still see a white strip in the stomach, but don't know if this is their anatomy or not.

Maybe it is hard to describe, but how much is "high concentration"? They seem to sink to the bottom. If I want to get higher concentration, I always get eggs, too, and I worry they might eat those.

The concentration will depend on how big of a container your larvae are in. The smaller the container, the less brineshrimp you'll need. Just make sure your larvae don't have to search to find food. If you want to seperate the eggs from the live, put your hatchery in a dark box, and put a bright light next to a hole in the box, near the bottom of the hatchery, and all the shrimp will swim toward the light. I suck mine out of my tub that I keep them in (I buy mine live), squirt them into a brine shrimp net, rinse them and dump them in. If you don't have a shrimp net, try pantyhose wrapped loosely around a wire hanger to make your own net.

(Message edited by Joan on November 18, 2005)

I think some may have eaten, but it's hard to tell for me. Their stomach seems a little orange, but I think it is their heart that makes it tough to tell?

I have been trying a similar method with a light, Joan, and it works very well to remove the hatched eggshells, but the unhatched eggs sink, too. Even if I buy the more expensive 90% hatch eggs, that still means 10% of what I will get using this method will be unhatched eggshells, right? Is there any easy way to remove those?

I don't have any experience with hatching my own, so I really can't say. Hopefully someone else will chime in. I know egg casings can cause impaction, but I don't know about unhatched eggs. Maybe move the light to halfway up the container? Then the hatched shells float, the unhatched shells sink, and the brine shrimp are in the middle?

The heart is in the front, and the liver is down the side, and both of these will appear sort of orange, but when they feed, their whole belly, all the way to the base of the tail should turn orange. Also, a tell-tale sign of feeding is when your larvae start making little 'hopping' motions, like they're taking little jumps. That's how they attack food.

(Message edited by Joan on November 18, 2005)

I am also having a batch of eggs hatch, Akira--it sounds like the first couple of my guys were out a couple days before yours, and the first few just started eating a couple of days ago. Sometimes they seem to hatch a bit before they're really ready to enter the world. The first two that hatched for me were in a set of eggs that were connected; perhaps it's the case that had something to do with it.

If you keep them in small containers such as cups, and provide a more or less constant supply of food (as Joan said feeding twice a day for example) they should start to eat. Sometimes you can see the orange in their system before you actually witness them eating, so it's a really good sign.

As for the cysts, I have a similar problem, perhaps moreso since I usually use ~60% hatch rate cysts (the nauplii/$ rate is the best). What I normally do is follow the method of draining from the bottom to remove most of the hatched shells. Then, I suspend the filtered result in water and shine a light above (in my case, I guess it's probably more accurate to say at that stage it's coming from all around)--in something like an old spaghetti sauce jar and wait for awhile. The unhatched cysts sink to the bottom along with any nauplii that have died. Perhaps a couple of unhatched shells float to the top. I use a turkey baster to grab the actively swimming ones out of the middle.

I usually do have an odd one or two that gets in with the larvae, but so far this really hasn't caused any problems for me. I have read that both hatched and unhatched eggs can cause death, but haven't experienced any yet.

If anyone else has a better way of separating them, I'd love to hear it, too. I tried a method once of having a capsule in the water where I put the shrimp/egg mixture with a tiny hole for the shrimp to swim out--it worked pretty well, but I still got a couple shells in it and it was a lot more work, so I'm back to my current method.

The best luck I have had is with this hatchery
http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/store.cfm?d=3249&c=5279&p=27242&do=detail

After I unhook it from the air pump I let it sit on the counter for about 4 - 5 min and the hatched brine shrimp drop to the bottom of the bottle, the shells float to the top. If you put a twist tie or string on the tubing you can tie it up to a kitchen cupboard handel so it is higher than the hatchery so there is no leaking.

Some of the unhatched eggs do fall to the bottom but since it has the air line attached I can see whats in it and I let the first part (because that is where the unhatched eggs collect) of the flow from the tubing go down the drain when I see the flow change to orange (baby brine shrimp) I move the tubing over the brineshrimp net and collect as many as I need from the bottle and rinse them.

You can hook the hatchery back up to an air pump and let it bubble again.

The brineshrimp are able to survive in the hatchery for about 36 hours after they hatch with no food. After that they seem to start dieing. So I try to use up the batch in a day or 2.

I have two of the hatching bases and with the use of a light to add heat you can have baby brineshrimp available to feed every day.

Part of this photo series shows what they look like after eating:

http://www.caudata.org/forum/messages/793/48274.html?1132382207

That's a good tip, Cynthia... I hadn't noticed since my spigot doesn't have an air hose on it, but the unhatched cysts tend to fall faster than the nauplii? I'll have to see if I can use that somehow...