Egg help

[sammannell]

Hey everyone.

My newts have been laying eggs the last two weeks and they don't seem to be developing? They are just staying white and often going yuck after a day or so. Are they infertile or is something going wrong? I've seen my males tail fanning the females almost everyday for the past month.

Here's a pic of 2 in 1 and one gone bad.

 

[seandelevan]

You might be surprised how long they take until they hatch. Remove and discard the bad onesobviously and be patient with the others. I remember my first batch of eggs took 2-3 weeks and just when I was about to toss em they all hatched. Watched water never boils......

 

[sammannell]

Thanks I was hoping that was the case.

I mixed all the eggs up so I'm hoping it was just the first lot going bad and the newest ones would still only be a week old so a while to go.. I'm just so excited haha. I've had so many go bad at least 30 eggs so far..

I bought some chinese fire belly eggs that are almost ready to hatch so hopefully that will help with my impatience hahaha.

 

[sammannell]

I've also noticed a lot of the eggs that go cloudy have small snails on them, could the snails be interfering?

 

[Chinadog]

I've been having the same issue with eggs failing and going opaque and empty. For ages I've swung back and forth from being convinced that snails are egg predators to no they definitely aren't and I'm still not 100% sure. There's been no problems with a few eggs hatching in my pyrrho tank until this year and I've noticed a new species of snail that must have hitched in with some live food. They are very small, about as big as a coriander seed and there's thousands of them, I'm thinking of stripping the tank and starting again with new plants and decor.

 

[seandelevan]

The only snails in my tanks, that I know of, are Malaysian trumpet snails and your common pond snail. I only saw the pond snails near the eggs that were "bad". Other than that they left them alone.

 

[sammannell]

Wow I too have a new type of small snail that came of some plants!

They're tiny and orange or brown, hundreds of them. I also found 2 tiny native leeches that must have come from the plants too.. gross.

I've been taking any snails out of the breeder box with the eggs but literally every oqaque egg I pick up in the main tank has had at least 1 tiny snail on it, I haven't noticed any on the good ones, idk whether they just haven't found them before I do or they don't eat them :sad:

I've done a big water change, cracked a window above the tank so it's cooler and put the breeding box closer to the filter to get more water flow so fingers crossed something helps

Some of my eggs the insides are just white, does this mean infertile?
And some are half brown/white but some still seem to be going bad :dizzy:

I was so excited for this season but it isn't going well!

 

[seandelevan]

The white ones are bad. Sometimes I just let things take its course. These eggs are exposed to probably much worse in the wild. Again, it was when I stopped tinkering did I start getting baby newts. And now I have a system going. And it's basically putting the adults in a tank with water filled with algae, duckweed, plants, and "dirty water"...aka pond water. Yes they're snails, leeches, and all sorts of microorganisms....but it's this water that has given me the best results so far. These animals have gotten on fine without us for millions of years...they don't need our help lol. Simple way is the best way.