Breeding Axols, i dont want so many young to take care of, help?

I would like to start breeding axolotls, but since it is my first time, i do not want to care for more than 15 juveniles; and i know they can have up to well over a hundred eggs at a time. is their anything i can do besides simply killing the eggs, i do not want to be inhumane.
i dont mind if other adult axols eat them as that is a natural but i personally dont not want to destroy a fertilized egg.

1.will the parents eat all of the remaining eggs i do not remove from the tank to be raised?
2. any other suggestions i can do so i dont have to raise so many axols?
1:49 AM

If i leave most of the fry in my adult axol tank, will the parents eat ALL or most of them?
if not, do you they would be dangerous to feed my fish?.. i would liek to breed, but dont want to be taking care of more than 40 fry.

If you don't want too many axies to raise simply leave the eggs you don't want in the main tank. The big ones will eat them. Just take out whatever you want.

You can also sell the eggs you don't want to other axolovers.

And I think that there are always a few young axies that won't survive (even if they're in a safe tank)

chuckieee said:

is their anything i can do besides simply killing the eggs, i do not want to be inhumane.

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Just cull them. It's the responsible thing to do. The only reason any animal produces 500 eggs at a time naturally is because the survival rate in nature is little to none. A stable population means that 2, over the course of their entire lifetimes, produce exactly 2 offspring that survive to adulthood and replace the parents. That means nature is incredibly selective.

My advice would be to keep all of them for the first two weeks after hatching (which is easy enough to do if you don't mind frequent water changes), so that you can accurately gauge the coloration of each individual, and which ones are more active and healthy, and select for desirable traits. Clove oil (natural anaesthetic), or baking soda (produces carbon dioxide and asphyxiates) are humane ways to do away with them after the first two weeks. If you'd rather they not go to waste, you can feed them to your fish or the parents.

Im in chicago il, can we work something out.

I have 50+ C.orientalis and I rescued every egg we saw in the tank. I lost very few, but was a little overwhelmed and didn't want to cull the eggs either. I did ship some to various members of our board or I'd have even more! I felt OK about shipping the eggs, following the directions from the experts here. I think if I do one huge tank with all the offspring, I won't look for eggs again...will let nature take its course.

Dana

Morrison said:

If you don't want too many axies to raise simply leave the eggs you don't want in the main tank. The big ones will eat them. Just take out whatever you want.

You can also sell the eggs you don't want to other axolovers.

And I think that there are always a few young axies that won't survive (even if they're in a safe tank)

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Hey thanks for all your info it really helped, but my personal preferred thing to do would be to let the adults eat the remaining ones as this is natural and involves no human interference. if i raise the juvies for about 2 weeks and then put the unwanted ones in the adult tank will they still for sure eat them all even though theyve grown for 2 weeks. also how many juvies have you guys recieved in your batches as a refference?

thansk alot for all your help.

Axolotls seem to be so scarce in certain parts of Canada, I'd lean more towards Dana's advice and try posting the excess eggs in the FS section. If no one takes them, then go ahead with your culling plan but at least you can say you tried.

My experience with axies having axies for lunch was very disappointing to me because it was inadvertent. One of my smaller axies found a way into the larger axies cubicle. The 40 gallon tank is divided into a dozen compartments. I noticed i was missing a smaller animal and that one of the larger ones in an adjacent area was very fat. The size difference made this occurrence a surprise to me as I had been considering allowing all of the animals to live in the same 55 gallon tank I have set up at school. Guess NOT! So, to answer you question, will they all get eaten - unequivocally yes unless you tank has some special place the younger ones can hide out til they are big enough to fend for themselves.

I requested two lots of 10 eggs each and both shippers generously shipped extras. I had good success with numbers and ended with way more animals than I could care for so don't be too generous. I didn't have much, if any, mortality during the hatching process and eventually had about 25 or 30 extra larvae that I had to dispose of. I put them in one of my outdoor ponds as an experiment but it's been so hot here this summer there is very little chance that any have survived. I plan to drain the pond in the fall to see.

bayhicoach said:

I requested two lots of 10 eggs each and both shippers generously shipped extras. I had good success with numbers and ended with way more animals than I could care for so don't be too generous. I didn't have much, if any, mortality during the hatching process and eventually had about 25 or 30 extra larvae that I had to dispose of. I put them in one of my outdoor ponds as an experiment but it's been so hot here this summer there is very little chance that any have survived. I plan to drain the pond in the fall to see.

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wow guys thanks so much i really appreciate all your help and to dick willis, you have an awesome name lol and i had to look up some of your big words in the dicitonary but you helped alot. but aside from that ive got another question:

how often and how many should i feed the extra young to the adults.
also, what do you guys feed your axols and how often?.. i know i hsould post this somewhere else but while the thread is going, why not ?

also when i recieve my young, should i seperat each one indiviudally, or have a few together just according to size?

About the shippers, I asked for 30 but got about 55, but already 5 have not developed, but I will still probably have too many

People have said that you can group them by sizes, and I read an article somewhere (cannot find, sorry), that said the ones kept in a group developed better....so yeah

I started selling eggs around February in batches of 15, putting a few extra in to allow for losses. Then, around the end of April, I received an email from someone asking if I would sell her just 3 eggs. She qualified her request with the words, and I paraphrase,

"...I don't want to buy 15 eggs and raise them so carefully that all 15 survive - I would then be responsible for finding homes for a dozen extra axolotls."

I would fully expect 12 of the babies I raise, from any batch of 15, to survive, ready for rehoming. So, I started to worry that as a seller I was being irresponsible by selling more than people could cope with in a batch. In May I began selling eggs £1 for 2 (ebay wouldn't let me sell for 50p each). The number of people that took advantage of this opportunity and bought smaller quantities pleased me. Unfortunately there is only a small window of opportunity for selling eggs, because of the 2 week gestation. As a result I ended up having about 100 eggs unsold.

I had already rehomed about 30 baby axolotls since February and I was raising a further 30+ so more larvae was out of the question. I tried desperately to give the tads away to no avail and then, one grim evening, I used the ones I couldn't keep...as fish food. Without doubt that was one of the low points in my life - made all the worse when the very next day someone got in touch asking if they could have some.

dragonlady said:

Axolotls seem to be so scarce in certain parts of Canada, I'd lean more towards Dana's advice and try posting the excess eggs in the FS section. If no one takes them, then go ahead with your culling plan but at least you can say you tried.

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I agree. Read through the "Wanted International" section of this forum. You'll be amazed at how many people in Canada are desperately searching for axolotls. I bet some of them would be willing to give it a shot with raising some eggs.