Help! My babies aren’t growing!?

[Jessdino]

This is my first time raising Axolotl larvae and I’m getting a bit worried. My albino babies are growing much slower than my others? Is this a normal thing? I’m not sure. I sepreated all the albinos from the others because it looked like they weren’t eating as much as the others, but they still aren’t getting much bigger. Do they look okay? I attached a photo of my albinos with a penny and the others. They hatched between the 11th-14th. Most of the albinos were hatched first.

 

[Otterwoman]

Give them some time. It's only been a couple of days!

 

[Jessdino]

It’s been about a week and some of my albinos look like they haven’t grown at all since they hatched. I decided to separate by size tonight and have about 11 I’d considered haven’t grown and didn’t appear to have eaten. I put them in a separate container with shallower water to try and get them closer to food for tomorrow’s feeding. My other albinos are a bit bigger and to appear to be eating just fine. While a majority of the colored babies are 3 to 4 times the size of these 11 albinos. Only about 6 of my 42 albinos are caught up in size to the 50+ colored ones. Any advice would help. Is this normal for albinos? They’ve been under the same environment and feeding schedule as the rest of the babies. The albinos just seem to be developing much slower and are a lot less active than the others.

 

[Bellabelloo]

When I raised axolotl, I noticed that the wild types where generally larger in size and the leucistic and albino lagged behind. I separated them and the slow feeders where placed in smaller, shallower containers, as you have done. What are you feeding them? If it's brine shrimp, you should see that their tummies look yellowy/ orange.
There is also the possibility that these will be runts and may not thrive. Axolotl produce so may eggs that this will happen.

 

[Jessdino]

I’ve been feeding baby brine shrimp. That’s why I’ve noticed some aren’t eating anything at all it seems like. I’ll let them feed for 2-4 hours depending on my schedule and they’ll have no color in their bellies. I just found it concerning its almost all my albinos that are having this issue. Not a single wild type/melanoid/leucisitc is lagging this bad. Is it normal to have this many runts with albinos? Like I said. There’s only like 6 of the 42 albinos who seem to be growing at the same speed as the others.

 

[7Seven7sLotls]

I don't know much about this at all, as I am new to it as well, but wanted to share my experience.

I have some older hatchlings that are growing slower & it was bothersome. But, I was told first clutches tend to grow at a slower rate/have a higher die off then ones that have bred before.

I also noticed that my albinos tend to be troublesome eaters/lag in growth. This isn't ALWAYS true. I do have a couple that are doing great, but generally speaking in comparison to their darker clutch siblings, they tend to be the ones that don't eat as well/grow slower. I separate them out early so that the albinos don't have as much competition for food, but it doesn't seem to make a difference in their eating. I have also begun to give them black worm younger, just chopping it very small & overall they seem to do well with that, even though it doesn't move.

 

[Jessdino]

I noticed once I separated them by size and opted for shallower water it did help my smaller ones a bit. Those 11 tiny ones are still lacking though. I hate 1 albino I may move up to the large group tomorrow. I noticed they were sprouting some little leg nubs during the water change today.