Babies not eating.

Hi folks!

My axolotl babies are a good few days old now, and still don't appear to be eating the daphnia in their tanks. It's hard to see if the daphnia has actually gone down any, but I've certainly never seen a baby feeding.

Is there anything I should be doing to stimulate the babies into eating?

-bluefroggy.

Look to see if there's a white puffy like balloon on their bellies. That would be their yolk sack and if it is present, they are still getting nutrients from it instead of feeding. Once they exhaust their yolk sack, their bodies will be more transparent looking and then they will start eating. They can take a few days to go through their yolks. Temperature will affect how long. As long as their water is clean they should be fine. Leave daphnia in there for them while they are waiting so that there will be plenty of little baby daphnia that they can fit in their mouths.

Hi froggy

I had the same concern as you when my babies first hatched. They didnt feed for about a week but after that period they seemed ok. Mine would eat all day long now if i let them. They are growing up quick.

That's good to hear! I'm going away for five days and I was worried they might hatch and starve before I get back, so it's good to know they last quite a while before they need food.
I've just bought some live daphnia for them, do you keep it in their tank? Do you need to put food in there for the daphnia? if so what and how much? At the moment I've got the Daphnia in a separate tank and am feeding them on yeast, and a bit of the green water they came in.

If you want to feed the daphnia, you need to keep them separately (as the yeast and such will wreck havock with the water quality in your main tank). But there is no harm in leaving some of the daphnia in the axie's tank; they will live quite a while even without feeding.

One other thing about the daphnia: be careful not to overfeed them with yeast. Let their water clear COMPLETELY before adding more yeast.

all my daphnia died, I only put in a tiny bit of yeast, but I think it was too much....
so I've bought some brine shrimp eggs to keep them going till some more daphnia arrives. But my problem is, how the heck do I tell when the eggs have hatched? It's been almost 24 hours now, and I can't really see anything different yet. Do they swim and move around? have a different colour? different shape? they are so tiny!!!

At room temperature, it takes 2 days for brine shrimp to hatch. When they hatch, they are orange and hop around in the water.

I've got them at 27 degrees Celsius, so will they hatch faster?
Thanks...

Yes, that should speed them up (24-36 hrs or so). Where did you get the eggs? (Sometimes they are duds.)
See:
http://www.aqualink.com/marine/z-atemia.html
http://www.aquaria.info/faqs/artemia.htm

My baby axolotls were always feeding by day 3 on newly hatched brine shrimp. You could see the orange brine shrimp in their bellies (they were all white and gold albino).

There are many articles on the web for hatching brine shrimp. I found adding a light bulb over the hatching container was a MUST. This way you can have newly hatched shrimp everyday by using just 2 containers for hatching.

My brine shrimp set up consists of a 12 gallon acrylic tank (that is cracked so I use it for
this) inside the tank I put my shrimp hatching containers (a base and a 2 liter pop bottle, they are set up with air pumps). I have a pinch on light above the hatching containers and it has 1 60 watt bulb. The 12 gallon tank helps hold the heat from the bulb.

You can tell the shrimp have hatched because you can see them swimming around. The San Francisco brine shrimp are smaller and more orange. I find they are easier to see than the Salt Lake brine shrimp.

You need really good fresh shrimp eggs to get good hatches. You can get everything you need at http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/

If you don't see any shrimp hatching, your eggs could be bad, you need fresh ones.

I manage to "break the rules" about hatching brine shrimp, and they still hatch out just fine. I use no light over them, and I hatch them in the basement where the temperature is 68F (19C). It takes 2 full days for them to hatch at this temp. By using 2 containers and starting a fresh batch every 2-3 days I have a constant supply.