How soon can a female lay eggs?

[Kerry1968]

I have two one year old leucistic axolotls who recently produced a batch of eggs. Since she laid the eggs I have kept them in the same four foot tank with a divider in the middle. I had a shock today when I looked in her side of the tank and couldn't find her! It turns out she managed to squeeze through a hole in the divider that I had made for the spray bar to go through! I was amazed! She was obviously very determined to get to him! The problem is, when I looked in his side there were spermatophores everywhere and I'm concerned she may have picked one up and be about to lay eggs again. Will this be a problem, it's been only about 4 weeks since she last laid.
I wonder if the laying of the spermatophores enticed her through, or her getting into his side made him lay them? Anybody know? I find it very intriguing.

 

[Kaysie]

They can lay eggs almost continuously. This isn't very healthy, as it takes a lot of energy and resources to produce eggs.

It's hard to tell who was the initiator here. Best get a better divider!

 

[Kerry1968]

Update

The next day I had a tank full of eggs! I have now separated Lottie (the female) into a different tank so we don't have a repeat of this in a couple of weeks! I have left the eggs in the tank where she originally laid them, a lot of them don't look like viable eggs, which isn't a problem as I'm already raising 3 week old larvae from her previous batch!
I will pick out 20 or so larvae that hatch to bring on. I started with around 30 with the last lot and am down to 9, so on that percentage it shouldn't be too much trouble to rear another small batch!

 

[Daniel]

Re: Update

I started with around 30 with the last lot and am down to 9, so on that percentage it shouldn't be too much trouble to rear another small batch!

That's a rather bad percentage, how are you raising them? Was this the first time the female laid eggs?
With the batches of Axolotls I raised, I had a survival rate bof 90% plus but I read several times that the first batch can be difficult.

 

[Kerry1968]

Re: Update

Hello Daniel,
Yes, it was the first time she'd laid eggs.
The way I raised them was......
I kept them in a separate tank with a couple of inches of water once they'd hatched (no filtration). When I started losing larvae I changed to a smaller container with a higher concentration of daphnia. This seemed to work better and now I have moved them to two larvae per container, as there are size differences (only 8 left). I have been cleaning out any muck from the bottom of the containers every day and changing 100% of the water every other day as they're only small containers with only a couple of inches of water in each.
I have just checked the babies this morning and some of them look very poorly, hardly any movement and floating. The two biggest look fine though.
If I'm doing something wrong please let me know, I have another batch of babies about to hatch and I would hate to think I'm causing them suffering. Thank you for your response, Kerry.