How much brine shrimp eggs do I need?

[keiko]

My female started laying eggs today and I need to order some brine shrimp eggs asap so that I'll have them ready to hatch when the babies need them. Problem is I have no idea how much to buy. I was only thinking of keeping around 10-15 eggs. Also if you can recommend any good sellers on Ebay, I'd appreciate it.

 

[Lachlan McKillo]

I would say about 20g will do it. I've been through my first hatch 1 month to the day, I opted to raise 45. I ordered 50g and I still have probably 25g left. My babies are about 25-26 mm in length now with a few smaller runts.
According to Axolotls - Rearing from Egg to Adult 25 mm is about the size you can start feeding frozen blood worms.

I would suggest for starters feeding them 1/8th or 1/6th of a teaspoon of brine shrimp I started with 1/4th and there was way to many brine shrimp left over and I had about 45 eating them. Of course this depends on hatch rates you might want to do more than this and see what I mean.

On a side note does any one know at what size axolotls can hunt via smell?

 

[keiko]

Great! Thanks for your answer.

 

[bugdozer]

One thing that's a handy tip - for every batch of shrimp you hatch, take some out and put them in the fridge. That way if your next batch "fails" (which can happen for no obvious reason) you will still have some living BBS to feed the tadpoles. When they are in the fridge their metabolism slows right down and they don't lose so much nutritional value (there's a research paper on the net somewhere about this but I don't have the link).

 

[Lachlan McKillo]

I figured brine shrimp would not hold up to well at those temps?