Cloudy water when eggs hatched

[Annabee]

My hatchlings have died! I had my eggs in a 10 gallon tank. The water was about 5 inches high and the temperature was a steady 68°. My eggs were due to hatch at anytime. I checked on them last week first thing in the morning and the water was cloudy and 2 larvea had hatch but one was already dead. I did a 100% water change and within two days most of my eggs had hatched. They seem to be fine at first but then they started dying off. I continued to feed them and preform 100% water changes but they continued to die. Help, i dont know what i did wrong.

 

[Martin21114]

How many eggs did you try to raise? Did you use a water conditioner? What were you feeding them?

There's a really good guide here: Axolotls - Rearing from Egg to Adult

I use a small tupperware container to hold me eggs and larvae until they get front legs, then upgrade them to a shoe-box size one until they are a few inches long. I also do daily 100% water changes with tapwater treated with zoo med brand blue juice (I forget them name but zoo med makes it and it's a blue fluid).

I feed baby brine shrimp 2x/day with a water change. Basically before work I scoop all the larvae out, put them in a container of fresh water, squirt in some blue juice, then drop in rinsed baby brine shrimp. When I get home I do it again before I go to bed. They end up getting fresh water and live food about every 12 hours.

I try to over feed them at first when they are little to get them growing asap. I also get them off baby brine shrimp and eating black worms as quickly as I can, usually after a couple weeks when the little bugger have arms. You have to finely chop the worms at first, but it worth it. I found once they start eating worms their growth rate explodes. The worms also don't foul the water like the shrimp, so I just feed & change the water 1/day once they start eating worms.

Good luck, there's plenty off eggs for sale here (in the for sale section of the board) at the moment if you want to try again. Zaria's are especially awesome. I hatched 3 and got a melanoid, leucistic, and wild-type. Almost every flavor

 

[Annabee]

I had 55 larvea, I used tap water and i fed them bbs. My care was almost exact to yours but with out the containers and the blue juice. I didnt treat the tap water, i have plenty of blue jucie and didnt think to use it. I had done alot of research before trying to raise my first larvea... i thought i had this in the bag. Im crushed.

 

[FireStar]

I'm not sure about what exactly is added into tap water in the USA, but in most places, treating tap water is a must. Treating it neutralises the chloride, the chloromines, heavy metals etc in the water that will kill fish and axolotls. Sorry.