Can hatchlings be raised on baby daphnia?

[layna]

Has anyone got any experience with feeding axolotls daphnia right from them hatching? ive got 17 in one tank with plants and im finding it difficult to make sure they are all eating?


I thought if i got some baby daphnia and put loads in the tank, would they eat these themselves without my input?


Any advice would be much appreciated as the oldest is 3 days now and i dont want him to starve

 

[xxianxx]

Has anyone got any experience with feeding axolotls daphnia right from them hatching? ive got 17 in one tank with plants and im finding it difficult to make sure they are all eating?


I thought if i got some baby daphnia and put loads in the tank, would they eat these themselves without my input?


Any advice would be much appreciated as the oldest is 3 days now and i dont want him to starve

Yes daphnia is a great source of food for hatchlings. Just make sure you put enough in to keep them all fed. Just out of interest what is your tank set up and what cleaning schedule are you planning ? there are a couple different ways of raising axolotls and if you are exclusively feeding daphnia there is an easy way of doing it.

 

[layna]

They are all currently in one tank with lots of strands of plants to help them hide, its supposed to float but ive got the water level so low for them it sits on the floor haha.

I plan on doing 50% change every 3 or 4 days maybe? as they have daphnia in there and the plant so the water quality shouldnt get too bad in that amount of time ( i hope!)

I was just going to plonk in a load of baby daphnia and a few adults and let the lottles fend for themselves, and hope that the daphnia adults would continue to reproduce?

I've never raised them from the egg before only from around 2 weeks old so i dont want to kill them with silly mistakes!

 

[crazylady]

Hi im doing this set up with help from ian its also my first time raising from egg I have 8 larvae all doing well they hatched a week ago an its easy i go to the pet shop once aweek to get loads of daphnia pour the bags through a coffee filter an then add the daphnia to the larvae tank. I do small water changes with my adults water every 2nd day i also have plants an duckweed to help

Ps make sure you have a good surply of daphnia as they have a tendancy to crash

 

[xxianxx]

If you want the daphnia to breed you need to avoid de chlorinated water, use aged water preferably green water i.e. that loaded with algae as it is a food source, just check that the nitrate levels are not too high.

 

[layna]

Oh they dont like dechlorinated water? I have the adult daphnia in a seperate jar filled with pond water, is this right?

I then just suck some out of the jar and put them in the tank with the hatchlings, but what type of ratio do i need of the daphnia?

Im just a little worried cause they obv dont move much and if they are not near the daphnia they cant eat it right?

 

[layna]

8 hatchlings? Cool i ordered 15 and got a couple extra in so ive ended up with 17, i know they wont all survive and it seems i have a deformed one but hes hatched so ill see how he goes.

I worried all the time with my other baby one but hes getting his back legs through now so he is doing well he is also very aware that when the pippette goes in hes getting fed and goes up on his front legs real high and looks up to wait for his food, sooo cute :wacko:

 

[xxianxx]

You can fill the tank up with daphnia to ensure sufficient food or keep the water level low to concentrate the food supply.

 

[layna]

Well the water level is defiantly low hehe and ive just ordered two more lots of daphnia to arrive monday so hopefully they will be okay on what they have untill then

Thank you for your replies everyone!

 

[xxianxx]

Do not rely soley on shop bought daphnia, supplies can dry up without warning leaving your axolotls starving.

 

[layna]

Oh i always order more before i run out, im not worried about running out just weather they will be able to eat them by themselves hehe

 

[Olivia97]

Oh i always order more before i run out, im not worried about running out just weather they will be able to eat them by themselves hehe

I think Ian means that pet shops can very quickly run out of daphnia without warning

 

[layna]

I understand that hehe and i wasnt being horrid, i just have lots of sources for getting daphnia and a pond in my backyard if all else fails for little critters

I was just confirming my thought that daphnia can be the fist food source used on hatchlings and i could skip the troublesome bbs with them

 

[Kaysie]

I never used brine shrimp. Daphnia are far easier.

 

[Jake]

Brineshrimp are not as troublesome as one might think. They can be hatched using minimal space (a 2 liter bottle can hold enough to feed 800+ hatchling axolotls!) and they are far more reliable than Daphnia which have a tendency to bloom and crash and may be difficult to collect in large number during the winter. Axolotl larvae eat a lot, they are in a race against their sibblings to grow the biggest the fastest. What may seem like a lot of Daphnia for a few young larvae will be a small snack for that same group of axolotls when they're a few weeks old. It's a good idea to have other foods available just in case.

 

[layna]

Yeah the trouble is that they are all in one tank :/ and i did try hatching BBS for them but unfortunatly only like 10 bbs actually hatched out of 100's of eggs waste of money!

What is a safe depth to have the water when theyre a week old? ive read that its best do do it just a bit deeper than the length of their body but with 17 in one tank and barely any water, i was having to do water changes three times a day to keep it in safe parameters (difficult when you work 40 hours a week) so ive now got it about an inch / incha and a half deep :wacko: