Ambystoma mavortium melanostictum breeding

After last years succes with Ambystoma tigrinum, I wanted to try the larger and more color ful Ambystoma mavortium melanostictum.
They were hibernated outside and when the water temperature passed 4 *C in the daytime I placed my 2 males in the tank. One of them emidiately left the water, but the other stayed in. 4 days later I placed one female in there too and the day after the other female.
The male started his dancing emidiately, so I let them in peace and crossed my fingers.

2 days ago one female started to deposit eggs and she is still doing it. There are hundreds of eggs allready, so if they are fertile, there will be a lot to do the next 4 months :happy:









Best wishes

Søe

Congratulations !

I will try a melanostictum breeding this week end...hoping I will succeed too...

If you have too much fertile eggs... ;-)

The eggs are fertile :happy: I took about 80 and placed warmer inside, and they are all developing.
Now the big question is: Are there 500-1000-1500? I cannot tell, but there are eggs all ower the branches and plants.
Funny enough no eggs deposited on the rocks like the tigrinum did with almost all their eggs.

The first larvae have hatched and 2 days later dubbled their size.
This is way faster than last years breeding of tigrinum.
I didn`t expect this so I am a little worried, since I have to go to a show in Praque and will be away for 5 days.
So I catched a lot of cyclops and hope that it is enough untill then. If not I will have a few but very big larvae

Now my tigrinum "Gilberts Illinois" also hatched. Tha is actually 14 days earlier than last year, but they are miniature compared to the melanostictum larvae.

Just a little pic of size difference:

A. tigrinum "Gilberts Illinois"



A. mavortium melanostictum

Summer went and I didn`t do much other than adding a lot of daphnia in the containers and let the plants grow. I saw a larvae now and then, but didn`t expect that there were more than 10-20 all together.
Finally my summervacation started, so I began cleaning the containers and found some surpricing results:

!: Nothing..............There were a few huge dragonflylarvae there though

2: Some started to show up. From very small ( about 4 cm ) to 10-12 cm



3: A fair number of good size larvae and a few that have changed



4: 1 only ONE larvae but a huge kanibal



5: All have changed and started showing the lovely colors




They were all fairly skinny. Quite natural since I have fed believing in 15 larvae and there are more like 100.
2 days and liters of daphnia and lots of earthworms later they look like real larvae and salamanders again.