Question: What next?

My female axie has stopped laying but what do I do next?

I have a tank set up for when my hatchlings are ready to go in there, in the mean time I have read that people put there eggs in any type of plastic container (i'm going to go for a unused washing up bowl and keep a towel over the top and place it in a cupboard), I understand I don't need to change the water for when they are eggs but I do when they hatch, and at that point I move them into individual containers in water from my main tank to stop them eating each other?

I have bought frozen daphnia and will be picking up some bbs when the pet shop has them.

When transferring my eggs to my container is there anything I should look out for? It seems most of the eggs seem to look like little yingyang symbols, is this normal?

the parents:



Also I still have spermblobs in my tank, as I don't really want Mia to get pregnent again is it best I put her in the fridge for a couple of days to help her recover? (and hope the spermblobs go by that point)

Thanks

You don't really need to separate them until they start getting their back legs or there are drastic size differences really and even then it isn't a necessity if they are well fed I guess? My little guys, with the exception of one, have been housed together since hatching and there are no nipping injuries yet. They are 2 months old now. The wild type was separate for a while as it wasn't growing as quickly and was a tad deformed. It has caught up and is in with the 3 goldens now though

With regards with what to look out for, if the eggs are clouded then it means they are duds. Up to you if you bin them, keep them in with the rest or separate them I guess.

I don't have a mature male yet so couldn't comment on the spermatophores but in stead of leaving them, personally, I'd take them out and keep mummy separate for a good while so she doesn't get pregnant again or put a divider in the tank.

Your eggs sound normal. The best way I've found to keep larvae is to put 3-4 in individual sandwich containers. You'll get a little bit of cannibalism, but if you do your best to keep them sorted by size, you'll limit that.

Depending on what you use to feed your larvae, you'll need to change between 50-100% of the water in the sandwich containers every day. I like to use water from the adult tank, so I think you'll find that the best method too.

Frozen daphnia aren't really appropriate for newly hatched larvae. They need food that moves. So either you'll have to culture your own daphnia (which is easy once you get the hang of it), or you'll have to hatch your own brine shrimp. Daphnia live in fresh water, so you'll need to change the water a bit less. Brine shrimp will die in fresh water in a couple of hours, so you'll have to be quite diligent about cleaning the tubs less you want the brine shrimp to make your little tubs inhospitable.

If you take the female out, and then reintroduce her, your male will probably see that as a 'new' opportunity, and actually lay MORE spermatophores. If your pair doesn't spawn frequently, you can keep them together. But if they're spawning too much, this can stress your female and you'll need to separate them either with a divider or into separate tanks.

Thanks for the info

Re food then, which is the easiest to grow yourself?

I think I prefer the sound of daphnia (Live Daphnia) however at 0.59p a bag that seems cheap and I don't know how many bags I will need before I start feeding them more grown up food......

Start culturing them now. Daphnia is pretty easy to culture. The less you mess with a culture, the better. Here's an article on how.

Brine shrimp are easy to hatch, but it's pretty hard to culture at home.

Kaysie said:

Start culturing them now. Daphnia is pretty easy to culture. The less you mess with a culture, the better. Here's an article on how.

Brine shrimp are easy to hatch, but it's pretty hard to culture at home.

Click to expand...

How long does it take to cultivate?

I guess I'll try and order them over the weekend, I'm going to take the eggs out of the tank tomorrow (hopefully) using water from my main tank and go from there.

Just to clarify whilst it's still eggs I don't need to worry about the water to much?

I bought a bag of 800 daphnia, and used the culture for 6 months.

Correct, there's no need to do much with them when they're eggs.