Failure, yet a learning experience....

Well, I had around 65-70 eggs my Axolotls laid. I had to go on a trip, so I trusted a friend to raise these for 2 weeks while I was gone. They were to raise brine shrimp as food for the Axolotls. I got a call on Friday saying the Axolotls had hatched, but the Brine shrimp did not. The Axolotls have no food, because the eggs will not hatch. Here is the brine's conditions: 82 F, good aeration, appropriate amount of aquarium salt, plus a little baking soda to raise the pH. Eggs won't hatch at all. I believe we received bunk eggs. The eggs were probably sitting in a freezing warehouse for 10 years.
So, the Axolotls are now starving. I told my friend to wait 3 days. If we have no sign of hatched brine shrimp, the Axolotls will have to be put out of their starving misery. I am crying, very upset over this. I am also very p***ed off about PetSmart giving me bunk eggs.
What did I do wrong with these shrimp? I swear all parameters were optimum.
I learned though. I learned to never use brine shrimp, to use daphnia. And to never go on vacation with babies.

Why not have your friend go get some other eggs/daphnia/pond critters?

Oh no
I have brine shrimp eggs ready to go, but if I have the same problem, do you thing the hatched babies would eat springtails? Because I have a culture of springtails going for my red eye tree frog terrarium.
It's too cold here right now to buy daphnia anywhere and no stores around me have them in stock. I was hoping to deal with daphnia instead of bbs just because they stay alive longer.


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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=44.926736,-93.081121

We've lost hope for getting other eggs, shrimp are not an option right now. All local ponds are frozen over, no microscopic life there. I did consider the pond water method, but my friend said she couldn't see any aquatic life in the local metropark's pond. I was considering daphnia, but I'd have to order it online, get it express shipped, etc. And we don't have time to get algae to feed the daphnia. There's no time, it's been around 80 hours since they hatched. They're already starving......
At least I learned, to never screw with brine shrimp ever again. When I get back home I will buy a starter culture of daphnia online.

You still have options. If I were you, I would buy some hatching decapsulated brine shrimp off ebay (I can tell you an awesome seller). These hatch really fast, and they are extremely reliable. Ship them priority or overnight if you can. Even if a lot of your larvae die before they get there in the mail, You could still save some.

FOR NOW, have your friend get some live black worms and chop the heck out of them. It's hard for axolotl larvae to tackle chopped blackworms, but they can if they're chopped fine enough.

As for there being now pond life, that just can't be. There's stuff in that water that the axolotl larvae will eat that you can't even see.

You can also order a daphnia pulex culture from Ebay overnight that are ready to be fed. It should hold you long enough to get some bbs going or just buy a 1000+ culture and run with those.

There is an old post about feeding cooked egg yolk to babies, i have never tried it and only suggest it as a last resort.

Ian, I just explained it to my friend and she will do it ASAP, see if it works. I wish we had time to grab a starter culture of daphnia. We have no money to express-ship anything. That can get very expensive.

I've found brine shrimp do not hatch unless they have a source of light like a desk lamp or good natural sunlight. You don't mention light in your post so it could be the one thing that is stopping the eggs from hatching? Good luck anyway.


Regards Neil

Hi,

light isn´t important for the BBS to hatch. I culture my BBS always in a dark room without any light - no lamp, even no window.

Greetz, Tina

Only problem with daphnia is you gorra find very small ones for when the eggs hatch and that can be hard

Neil C said:

I've found brine shrimp do not hatch unless they have a source of light like a desk lamp or good natural sunlight. You don't mention light in your post so it could be the one thing that is stopping the eggs from hatching? Good luck anyway.


Regards Neil

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I have a grow light on them.

I just posted a Wanted ad for a 700+ starter culture of daphnia. I hope I get a reply, and get them shipped in time.

Have you not got microworm over there ?????

I would also post an add for anyone that has bbs hatching in your area on here. I know a few memembers on here that gave some away. The best of luck to you. I heard that egg yolk boiled take,a bit off and swirl it round the tank so its moving,and make it small, better than nothing, you can do this! Pet shops on the web and in your area should sell brine shrimp. Sera artmeia mix is very good already mixed just add water and bubbles. 1 bag costs about.a pound in gbp so its not too bad with shipping. I would highly reccomend giving those a go .

I have 17day old hatchlings that I have raised from day 1 on boiled egg yolk, by day 10 I had them eating frozen bloodworm. I used a whole egg yolk(boiled and then cooled) a syringe (no needle) a shot glass and between 10 to 15 ml of the water the hatchlings were living in. Put the boiled yolk into shot glass, sqaush and mash as much as possible, I sucked up 5ml of water from the hatchlings container then added this to the mashed egg yolk and continued to mash, added another 5ml of water and kept mashing until the egg yolk was a watery paste. Once this was done I would suck up 5ml of the yolk paste into a syringe(no needle) and squeeze drops of the paste as close to hatchlings as possible, they would normally sqiurm away quickly, some would stay put. I had 5 hatchling in each container so would put many drops around the container so they would maybe squirm away but stop in or near the yolk, obviously daily water changes as didnt want to risk bacteria, and never used the same yolk again, always boiled a fresh egg. By day 10 I introduced frozen bloodworm and now day 17 they are all growing well and feeding well on frozen bloodworm, will put some pics on later. I hope this might help you, .any views/comments on this will also appreciated thanks. I forgot to say first couple of days I was only sqeezing about 1 ml worth of droplets of the yolkpaste into container by day 5 was putting about 2.5 ml of droplets in

millerj76 said:

I have 17day old hatchlings that I have raised from day 1 on boiled egg yolk, by day 10 I had them eating frozen bloodworm.

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What lead you to choose this method over brine shrimp or daphnia? Is it an experiment or have you had previous success with this method? Would be interesting to know.

alright ian, i already owned a green/wildtype yr old axxie(arnie) but really wanted a leucistic, i had my local pet shop on the look for one but he was having no luck so i decided to buy some eggs that were advertised not too far away,,,through my exitement i forgot one thing,,research, i should have done this before buying the eggs. Thanks to this site and after nosing through many pages i read through a couple of threads and a few, only a few, had mentioned the egg yolk. I searched many of my lfs/lps and struggled to aquire bbs/bs i also thought about microworms daphnia, but the egg yolk idea was stuck in my head. Although i am fairly new to axxies i have a good 8 yr experience with fishkeeping and the egg yolk idea rang good to me,so i decided not to use live food, it could have gone terribly wrong and i could've had a bad experience, thankfully, and i have to say i was really confident, it seems to have worked, i plan on introducing live food to their diets, at the moment they are eating the frozen bloodworm really well and they look exactly like the day 15 to day 20 hatchlings that dingodoo has documented so well. I am thinking of maybe doing a short video of how i prepared the eggyolk and how i administered to the hatchlings as i think it could be helpful to all who struggle getting live food and hatching bbs,,,,,,answer to your question, it was an experiment, but i can't take no plaudits as i got half the idea off of here and used some of my own techniques,

John Im really struggling with mine at the moment, I might have to try your method as a last shot, I just hope it will work! xx

A video would be lovely too, especially if we could see larvae feeding on it x

Right, going to make video now, i am no longer feeding them with the yolk as they took well to the frozen bloodworm, been off as kids were home, they are all in bed now so will be back in about half an hour with video for you,,,,,