How many eggs N. kaiseri female is laying in your tanks each season?
My observation:
After I got my small group of kaiseri the females laid 60 eggs each.
In the following year I got 200 eggs of each female!
The crazy thing was that females were very thick in the first breeding season and quite thin in second. I feared they did not produce eggs during "hibernation", and than they laid so many...
I did not see differences in egg size and about 98% of eggs were fertile in the 2 cases.
My explanation: good amount and quality of food brings much more eggs.
the females were fed with mosqito larvae and other small water invertebrates before I got them and most probably kept year round in water.
I keep my animals only during breeding season in water.
The get dusted (minerals and sometimes vitamines) crickets on land. That makes them well prepared for resting and then breeding.
I observed that my kaiseri did not like red mosqito larvae so much and ate only small amounts of them. I fed the animals in second season with chopped earth worms in the water and after 2 weeks they got used to it and from this time on they become vicious if they smell any in the tank.
So I conclude that there might be no difference within wild populations in ammount of eggs but differences in feeding of captive animals.
My observation:
After I got my small group of kaiseri the females laid 60 eggs each.
In the following year I got 200 eggs of each female!
The crazy thing was that females were very thick in the first breeding season and quite thin in second. I feared they did not produce eggs during "hibernation", and than they laid so many...
I did not see differences in egg size and about 98% of eggs were fertile in the 2 cases.
My explanation: good amount and quality of food brings much more eggs.
the females were fed with mosqito larvae and other small water invertebrates before I got them and most probably kept year round in water.
I keep my animals only during breeding season in water.
The get dusted (minerals and sometimes vitamines) crickets on land. That makes them well prepared for resting and then breeding.
I observed that my kaiseri did not like red mosqito larvae so much and ate only small amounts of them. I fed the animals in second season with chopped earth worms in the water and after 2 weeks they got used to it and from this time on they become vicious if they smell any in the tank.
So I conclude that there might be no difference within wild populations in ammount of eggs but differences in feeding of captive animals.