Can axolotls eat tadpoles

sparrowmayhem · Nov 25, 2008

i have seen some axolotls for sale and the have been feed with tadpoles are they a suitible for feeding i guess insted of feeder fish

thanks

pete · Nov 25, 2008

They surely would eat tadpoles, but it's clearly not the best food source.

Abrahm · Nov 25, 2008

I think I would recommend against feeding tadpoles for one reason, obtaining a healthy source. Any tadpoles you harvest from the wild or acquire from a pet store are likely to have parasites, fungi or bacteria that they could transfer to your axolotl. The safest way to feed them would be to quarantine for a month or two, but by then you might just have frogs.

If you also raised frogs and you had tadpoles to cull, they would make a fine supplement to your axolotl's diet, but otherwise I would avoid them

thya · Nov 26, 2008

the most important reason against feeding tadpoles is that they are full of thyroxine hence they are about to go through metamorphosis and feeding something like this to an axolotl could cause their metamorphosis as well.

so: not a good idea.

Kal El · Nov 26, 2008

thya said:
the most important reason against feeding tadpoles is that they are full of thyroxine hence they are about to go through metamorphosis and feeding something like this to an axolotl could cause their metamorphosis as well.

Generally speaking, the postembryonic development period of a tadpole can be divided into three stages: premetamorphosis, prometamorphosis, and metamorphic climax. During the premetamorphosis, the tadpole lacks the hindlimb buds and thyroid hormone (TH) is not present. Once it reaches prometamorphosis, there is a gradual increase in TH. The thyroid hormone is produced as thyroxine (T4) within the thyroid gland. There are other changes that occur, but I won't go into detail about this because I would be going off on a tangent. I'm assuming Sparrowmayhem is going to be feeding his/her axolotl tadpoles during the premetamorphic stage, whereby there will be no endogenous TH present to induce metamorphosis.

Axolotls have a reduced thyroid gland (sometimes it's not even present), therefore its ability to respond to TH is greatly reduced. Experiments have shown that it is possible to induce metamorphosis by administration of T4. However, these axolotls were immersed in 7 x 10-8 g/L of T4 for 3 weeks (Tompkins, 1978). This would mean that the axolotl would have to continiously consume tadpoles (during the prometamorphic stage) to achieve metamorphosis, but even this seems improbable. Another thing to keep in mind is that there may be metabolic changes to T4 if it is taken into the axolotl's digestive tract, even the liver will have its oxidative effects.

Having said all that, metamorphosis seldom occurs in axolotls.

Jay.

Abrahm · Nov 26, 2008

Kal El said:
Snip good technical stuff

Basically, there is no way an axolotl could eat enough tadpoles to have the thyroxine matter. Axolotl's ability to respond to it is lessened anatomically and biochemically. Having your axolotl metamorphose from tadpole consumption is the last thing you should be worrying about.

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