Larval care for P.waltl

[joeysgreen]

I havn't been able to find any discussions on this topic yet. I have a bunch of eggs that are developing fast and would just like to review their care. I understand that the adults will eat them, is this much concern if there is a thick matt of hornwort for the larvae to hide and grow in?
What do you guys feed your larvae? I have commercial fry food (essentially a powder) and am having difficulty in keeping a daphnia colony running outside of summer. Are there other options?
Anything else I need to consider?

Ian

 

[Jennewt]

I assume you've seen the general articles?
Caudata Culture Articles - Raising Newts and Salamanders from Eggs
Caudata Culture Articles - Microfoods

Other options for "first foods" include newly-hatched brine shrimp (or fairy shrimp), or finely chopped blackworms. Then they can graduate to blackworms, whiteworms, etc. I'd be very surprised if they eat the powdered food, that's unlikely to work.

Some of them may do OK in the parents' tank. This becomes impractical if you have a large number of them, and it also because less-workable when the larvae reach a size where they need to consume a lot of food.

 

[joeysgreen]

Thanks Jenn. I did miss those articles as I was looking for species specific information. I"ll definately have a look over them. Frozen food was suggested as a locally available backup.

 

[mizzerman]

Hi Joeysgreen,

Raising P. waltl larvae right now, they are about 4cm. They did great on brine shrimp, then whiteworms I got on ebay (canadian seller out of BC) and blackworms. They also started eating small sinking newt pellets and frozen bloodworms. Good luck with your herd, I'm waiting for some leucistic eggs from my new newts so I can raise another batch.

 

[ahritchie]

I've found you have to keep your baby brine shrimp operation producing constantly to keep the larvae fed if you have a lot of them. I have tried the "tropical medley" powder food, but they don't eat it. I have 3 separate BBS hatcheries going at different stages since they usually crash after 3-4 days and it takes 24-48 hours to get start hatching from scratch. The more often you can feed them the better...I try to at least twice a day. I have been experimenting with various sized containers as larvae nurseries and the smallest one I have is actually a large cylindrical "vase" that holds about 3 liters has consistently produced the fastest growing larvae. You can clearly see their bellies full of pink BBS after feeding, I think it helps to have a small volume of water for easier BBS "hunting"...just a theory though. (I have MANY larvae in a bigger 10 gallon nursery and they don't look as well fed). You may also want to try a daphinia culture, they do love them, but are more of a pain to culture in mass quantity as opposed to BBS IMO.