Self sufficient breeding tank thoughts

[fish4all]

I have been doing a lot of research on different critters that can be considered food for axolotl babies. Through all of this I got to thinking, could a persoin set up a tank that work produce enough natural food items that no supplimental food would be needed?

Dero/microfex worms, nematodes, daphnia, rotifers, moina and whatever else a person could throw in and get going before adding maybe a dozen axolotl eggs. There should be a way to get the aquarium stable with enough of them that you don't need to feed them until they get to maybe 2 inches long?

I know it may be difficult if not really hard and one would always want to have extra food on hand in case of a crash but does anyone think it is feasible even if it was for just 3-4 babies at a time?

 

[rachel1]

Baby axis eat a lot of food. I think you would have to have a pond heavily stocked with micro foods to grow a dozen babies to a couple inches. Otherwise they will wipe out the food items way faster than they would be able to multiply. And hungry babies are more likely to chomp each other. it might be doable, but I would expect you would need to have a large volume of water heavily stocked with rapidly multiplying food items. Even then you may have to supplementally feed the "food" to keep them reproducing.

 

[JM29]

It seems very difficult if not impossible in an aquarium.
You will sometimes have some success with a small number of babies in a large exterior tank, but then such a system is open :
mosquito larvae and drowning insects provide a useful additional food source in this case.

 

[fish4all]

Would definately be babies only and only let the natural food source serve until they get to maybe 1.5 or 2 inches.

From what I have read about Dero/microfex worms they reproduce very quickly. Daphnia do well with them.

I thought maybe a well cycled productive tank would provde enough food to get them to the point where the small food wasn't enough any more. Even if it was only 6 or so in a 55 gallon it owuld be kinda interesting to see them grow on their own.

 

[rachel1]

I think that would be risky. It seems like a lot of people new to raising larvae lose many to starvation and/or lack of appropriately sized food items. You would have to supervise very closely to make sure the food population was not being depleted. And again, I don't see it working at all unless you are adding food for the cultures. Also, you should definitely keep back up cultures on hand in case the larger culture crashes. Daphnia are prone to that.