Feeding and housing of 9 day larvae

[Creepella]

I have a brood (?) of larvae which hatched about 9 days ago. They are about 3/4 to an inch long. I've been reading the caudata.org instructions on raising them, but I'm confused about a lot of the info there (they don't go into enough detail, at least for me).

How they are to be housed? I've been keeping them in a 5 gal aquarium with a mini HOB filter. I put a couple of fake plants in there to give them hiding places and shelter from any excess water flow. I know they have to be separated at some point, but at what size? How many axies per container? Do the larvae need to be sorted by size? And what type of container do you put them in? Do they need filtration? Air stone? Hiding places? I was thinking of putting them in plastic shoe boxes, but again, I don't know what else has to be in the tank or if it needs filtration or aeration.

Second issue is food. I've been encountering extreme problems trying to get my hands on some brine shrimp eggs! Despite the fact that I live in Canada's largest city, NO pet/fish shops carry BBS here unless they are several hours' journey away to the next city by public transit. Today it's -35 C here and I really don't want to make the trek by multiple buses and transit systems. I've tried twice to order the BBS online from different suppliers, and both times the couriers screwed up and either lost my package or delayed it by over a week.

I ran out of the BBS I had last night, and this morning I tried feeding them finely crushed axie pellets. It looked like they were feeding, but not as much as they usually do. I do have frozen bloodworms and brine shrimp, but I guess it's too early to feed those? At about an inch, are they big enough yet to eat non-live food?

[Laura]

I would have thought they are too young at that age to eat non-live food, so if they are eating any of the crushed pellets, kudos to you!

I was going to suggest that for fry that young that you can get away with a much simpler set-up. I keep my babies in small containers and gradually increase the size and number of containers as they get bigger. I don't use a filter and change all of the water twice a day (much easier than trying to get dead food out of a regular tank.) But since you are having trouble getting bbs, your set-up may be an advantage - the flow may be making the crushed pellets "move" a bit, making them look like live food. (This is just a guess.)

Keep a close eye on the ammonia and nitrite level in your tank, especially since the crushed pellets are likely to decay more quickly than the bbs.

When they are bigger, they need to be sorted by size.

Suggestion: Email the biology teachers at the local high schools and tell them you desperately need daphnia or bbs eggs, and do they know where you can get them? I found out recently that the local high school uses daphnia for some of their classes.

[Creepella]

Originally Posted by LSuzuki

I would have thought they are too young at that age to eat non-live food, so if they are eating any of the crushed pellets, kudos to you!

I was going to suggest that for fry that young that you can get away with a much simpler set-up. I keep my babies in small containers and gradually increase the size and number of containers as they get bigger. I don't use a filter and change all of the water twice a day (much easier than trying to get dead food out of a regular tank.) But since you are having trouble getting bbs, your set-up may be an advantage - the flow may be making the crushed pellets "move" a bit, making them look like live food. (This is just a guess.)

Keep a close eye on the ammonia and nitrite level in your tank, especially since the crushed pellets are likely to decay more quickly than the bbs.

When they are bigger, they need to be sorted by size.

Suggestion: Email the biology teachers at the local high schools and tell them you desperately need daphnia or bbs eggs, and do they know where you can get them? I found out recently that the local high school uses daphnia for some of their classes.

I've been scouring the internet and calling fish and pet shops looking for a local source of BBS or Daphnia, so far no luck at all. The few that stock BBS are out of them. I have no contact with high schools, so no idea who I'd contact or how.

I crush the pellets until they are a fine powder, like flour. I mix in powdered "bottom feeder" shrimp pellets with axie pellets because they have a strong taste and smell - even my cats come running when I open the jar! When I add the powder to the tank, I gently stir with a chopstick to make it sink slowly. I watch the larvae, they do the little "bounce" that the grownups do when they eat. The filter does help to keep the water moving so the powder moves around more and the babies feed for longer.

Re water quality, I've been changing about half of the tank water every day. I test it for ammonia first (using API master kit). The filter has a cartridge with charcoal which helps. I check to make sure no larvae are being sucked into the filter. Even dead larvae aren't sucked in, but the dead shrimp are. I also clean the gunk out of the cartridge with a toothbrush.

Since the larvae eat at least some of the pellet powder, I'm going to see how they do until next week. The cold snap we're getting is supposed to end early next week. I'm supposed to receive a BBS shipment that was due to come yesterday, next Tues or Wed (Monday is a holiday, just my luck). I could always go out tomorrow if I really had to.

Here are my little GFP babies:

[Sully&Zeppelin]

did you ever end up finding any daphnia?

[Laura]

I thought of a possible source of daphnia - it will take a bit of research. See if you has a local fish club, and see if they have a web site with a for sale section. If you can find a web site with forums, search for "daphnia" and "brine shrimp eggs" - fish keepers raise daphnia for fish fry and will sell/swap with each other. And there are a lot more fish keepers than axolotl keepers.