Re: feeding larvae
I had a sort of forced experiment with feeding my larvae when they were about 1 week old and roughly 1 cm long. It was Friday (here stores are closed on Sundays and open at most only half-days on Saturdays) and my pet shop only had one bag of daphnia left, so I took basically everything he had. This gave me opportunity to observe/deduce (perhaps incorrectly?) a few things.
Daphnia seemed to be very well received and that's what they still get. However, for (some) new hatchlings it does really seem to be too large. I had at least one larva dead each morning, whether from starvation (I hope not) or explosion (not nice either), I do not know. I do know, however, that the dead ones were all smaller and less developed than those who were able to feed.
White worms and tubifex wriggled through the mesh of the nursery baskets (I have those out of fabric, hanging along the side of the parent aquarium) and wriggled into the sand, where they stayed and waved about and were ignored by the parents until I eventually siphoned them out. I therefore don't know how they would work if you have your babies in a plastic tub.
Mosquito larvae (white and red) were eaten by the axolotl larvae. At that time, though, they were roughly the same size (!) as the skeeter larvae and, as Ali wrote, the larvae bit onto them and then spent the next few hours trying to get them down rather than spit them out again. The (axolotl) larvae lived but it looked like anything but a pleasant dining experience.
Artemia was something I did not try because I had read that the adults are too large and so the axolotl larvae need newly hatched artemia, but I did not want to raise artemia with a supply of fresh food nearby. I have been told that newly hatched artemia is the best for new hatchlings - but for you, as it was for me, it's probably too late for that now.
That's kind of a consumer's report to help, hopefully, but there's one thing I really have to ask. I am dying to know how you separate larger from smaller daphnia? I hope that doesn't sound rude, they just all look tiny to me and I'm looking at my tools (net, sauce ladle, turkey baster) and trying to figure it out.
-Eva
