How many babies?

[LoriML]

Hi all. Just curious your opinion on how many babies someone new to breeding should try to raise? I wasn't expecting babies, and after talking to my pet store about buying juv's and a few friends interested in a some also, what is a realistic number I should shoot for as far as survival rate?

I currently have about 80ish embryo about 7-8 days after being laid. I noticed yesterday a couple of them have started to "twitch" in their eggs. There are a few that aren't developing which I will remove. To be honest I didn't quite expect this many to make it, so now I'm wondering if I'm in over my head! Should I cull some now or see how they do and expect some won't make it? I'll have BBS and several containers ready once they start hatching.

My long term goal of breeding is too much work is to just sell either male of female back and keep a couple juvs to be able to sex them and ultimately have either 2 female or 2 male in my 50 gallon and call it good, as I had no intention of breeding in the first place.

Sorry for the newbie breeding questions. I've read a very conflicted stories on expected survival percentages so I'm hoping for your experience to help me make a decision.

 

[LoriML]

Just something interesting I thought I'd share. Looks like twins, while only one developed. This may be common, but it surprised me.

 

[LSuzuki]

My first successful batch, I started with 20, had to cull 7, and was left with 13, that all made it. Even 13 were a lot of work.

If you are going to keep them in individual containers when they are bigger, figure out how many containers you have room for. That will establish an upper bound on the number to keep. (I liked the little rectangular ziploc containers, since their is little wasted space between them.)

Then figure you will be doing water changes twice a day or so on all those little containers, so you will need a bucket to age the water (so it is at room temp), and time to change the water.

So, I don't have an answer on how many you should keep, but hopefully this info will help you decide. :happy:

And that set of twins is pretty neat too. :happy:

 

[LoriML]

Ok thank you. That makes sense. I did plan on the smaller containers when bigger. I have an empty 10 gallon, but with the varying size differences when they get older, I'm not sure how many I could/should put in there anyway.