FYI: A bag of Gold!

This is a bit of an follow up for the "Out of Rehab and Down to Business" thread. Sovereign was only out of the fridge for three days when Peony laid her eggs and we turned into a made house.

Thought I'd post a few photos of the hatchlings and our little set up.

Firstly mum and dad. Peony is melanoid albino, and Sovereign is a laucistic golden albino. We got them both in May this year, and they were both about 150mm (6 inches) long when we got them. Peony is about 190mm now and Sov has out grown her a little and is 210mm.


The first baby hatched on the 1st Sept, and we separated all the viable eggs into the two trays we got for them, (tackle box, or bits box style trays) with most of the eggs/hatchlings having their own cells, a few are in share accommodation though. By the 4th all the eggs that were going to, were hatched, we had 56 hatch out, but had a few casualties and have 51 now.



Our next panic was that the NT Labs brand brine shrimp eggs we got did not hatch in the time frame stated, they stated 24~48 hrs. At 24hrs we only had about 40% hatched, and at 48hrs we were still only at about 60%... it wasn't until 72hrs that we achieved a 90% hatch rate. So an emergency phone call, then a drive across Melbourne to visit Frankie and pick up some brine shrimp eggs. Thanks Frankie! The Aqua Pics are fantastic!



The tub has a 200watt heater and a mini filter/pump to heat and circulate the water, instead of heating the bottles individually.



They are all currently the same colour as the ones in the photos, though I'm guessing they will change a bit as they grow, none are showing any colouring like Frankie's photos showed. The last photos were taken tonight and many show a red dot on their left side that we are a little curious/worried about, is it normal?

No photos showing for me.

If you open one of the broken images in a new tab you'll be brought to a confirmation page, and after confirming you can reload the thread and the images will show. However, one image seems to be repeated 8 times, and some others are still broken.

Otherwise, you have some nice looking parents and the babies look cute as well. Glad to see they're doing so well.

It was late when I posted the thread and I forgot about the disclaimer for my Uni. Here are the photos again as I can't even see the links in my own post now!

Dalabrae said:

The last photos were taken tonight and many show a red dot on their left side that we are a little curious/worried about, is it normal?

Click to expand...

The red dot is just the hart showing through there transparant skin.

Re: A bag of Gold! Red Dots on the left sides of babies?

Hi all,
I am Dal's other half,

Just to add regarding the Red Dot case: their heart is actually quite high up (looks like it's in their throat), so I don't think that the red dot is the Heart (you can see the hearts beating in their little chests and that dot is separate).

Odd. Any ideas?

Hiya
It is an organ of some sort.
Nothing to worry about.
I panicked when i saw them on my babies, i thought they had been nipping each other!!
But nothing to worry about its completely normal.
If you look on here the heart does show as being quite high up
http://www.axolotl.org/biology.htm

Mel

Place your axie in a transparent tub or glass. Shine a light source (ie torchlight) through the body in a dark room. That can startle the axie but shouldn't cause long term harm.

Look at the red spot throught the light source. If it is an internal organ, you would pick up the silhouette of a solid mass. If the red spot appears to be limited to the skin surface only, i suspect its more likely an ecchomosis, or a subdermal bruising.

A red spot seems innocuous but can be the precursor of scepticaemia and other blood clotting problems.

Looks like an organ to me. Regarding your PM, it sounds like they're not being fed well enough and frequently enough, and possibly being kept too warm too. The best way to get bubbles out of larvae is to make sure they eat something and lots of it - offer the food in front of their face if necessary, and hold it there. Also, you can't save them all - better to learn from this and make sure the rest don't suffer the same problem.

Thanks Rayson & John,

It seems the red sports are 3 D objects. Look like an organ. There is no swelling or assimetry in the babies on the left side (they all have it on the left side and in the same spot). Some bigger ones are feeding normally, although unlike John's babies he described in his articles, our little lot seem to stuff themselved full of food every second day or so, and not eat every day regularly.

We also lost another one to bloatation today: bloated bum (and stomack full of air sometimes). They die in about 2 days.

The sick ones look down in gills when they are not well, it's quite obvious. Several have not been eating properly at all. Is that part of "natural selection"? Some just don't seem to adjust to BBS despite the efforts...

Interestingly, they are the ones with smaller "red spots". The spots developed faster in the babies who took to food better.

Can you fridge babies to treat bloated bowels?

Angie

Thanks for your advice Everyone,

We have another baby with the bloatation issue.
Can we fridge him at such young age?

I think the red spots look more obvious when they have eaten a lot.
But all of mine had the same spot on the left side.
And all that hatched are still alive and well

Mel

It is not advisable to fridge very young axies as they are at a rapidly growing stage and require a high intake of nutrients.

Have a look at this link.

http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/why_larvae_die.shtml

An Update!

Sticking to John's advice of ensuring there is food all about them, we have decided to place several youngsters within one cell for a course of intence recovery therapy. Now they are all so chubby!!! The pictures below illustrate babies hunting baby brine shrimp.

We keep the water level down and make sure they get plenty of BBS. The only thing we are now worried about is Cannibalism.

Do they always canibalise or only when food is scarce ??

Angie & Dal

If they are well-fed at all times, and they are all around the same size, they will not cannibalize. If they are in tight quarters, they still might bite off a leg/tail here and there, but this isn't a serious problem.

I'm glad that moving them to a separate container was helpful. It is generally better to raise a few with "intensive care" than to try to raise a large number all at once. What you observed before was not "natural selection", it was probably overcrowding and the other kinds of problems that arise from trying to raise a large number.

Jen,

I think you misunderstood Angie, we haven't reduced the number of babies we have. We had one or two larvae in each cell of a tray (like a tool or craft tray) and Angie has moved them so now there is up to about 5 larvae in each cell (according to size) so when we feed there is a higher concentration of BBS in their cells, this seems to have helped all of them, but especially the 'weaker' ones that were not eating.

As you can understand we are now worried about cannibalism and are watching them intently to hopefully prevent such from happening. The cells they are in are about 7cm square.

Dal

Babies have grown Considerably,

Now their gills are defined by red blood vessels and bodies are starting to acquire more solid look.
And they have little fingers!!!

The red organs seem to have increased in size, but they are looking pretty healthy and have demanding appetites. Below is also pictured the plastic tool box they are housed in.

Their father Sovereign decided that it's time for another batch of eggs.... We are, frankly, still recovering from the first one, much like their mum Peony :happy:

Hey
Glad the little ones are doing well. They do look healthy.

I do think its time to spread them out a little more as they are looking a lil cramped, this will just decrease incidents of cannibalism.

Mel

Hey Mel,

We are looking into it, but the issue we have is that the amount of BBS hatchng is not enough to ensure full bellies. As mentioned, we had to move them to several small cells so that we could have higher concentration of BBS per cell as they weren't eating, and many were very thin. This tactic proved to be successful and they gained weight (as you can probably see). The issue is that they only eat well unless BBS is very concentrated.

But we will try to put in finely chopped up blackworm in with BBS now, so they may get an occasional mouthfull of it too ans start getting used to the flavour. I don't know if they are ready for adult BS yet.

Do you know when they are supposed to start eating adult brine shrimp?

Angie

Hiya
Yeah i understand.
At that size they should be hunting out the brine shrimp.
I go from baby brine shrimp to live/frozen bloodworm. I would go for something live tho first to keep them interested in feeding. Once the back legs have started forming i usually start with frozen.
How many do you have?

Mel