Larva is unresponsive and not eating

[Lusak]

Hi everyone,

About three weeks ago, my girlfriend and I received an axolotl larva from someone who decided she couldn't keep it. It was about nine days old when we got it, and looked entirely too small. I'm pretty sure it went through its first nine days of life without a single real meal because the girl was trying to feed it pellets.

After a couple days of scrambling to get a brine shrimp hatchery running (and failing), I found an aquarium store nearby that sells live blackworms. We cut one up into small pieces (maybe 2mm or so) and the baby snapped them up. We've been feeding it blackworm pieces since then and it seems to be doing okay (front limbs are developing, although slowly). We usually feed it twice a day, 3-4 pieces of worm each time.

Recently, though, it's been harder to get it to eat. It used to see the worm piece wriggling and snap it up, but now we have to drop the worm right on the baby's head to get it to snap at it. This morning it ate much less than usual, and when we tried to give it its second feeding today we thought it was dead. It wasn't responding to anything, even when I gently prodded its tail. It's still alive and moving on occasion, but we're pretty worried. It clearly has no food in its stomach and it doesn't seem to be at all interested in eating. I'm worried about the combination of not eating and general unresponsiveness. Am I overreacting? :uhoh:


Sorry for the novel-length post. I'd appreciate any help you guys can give. Thanks.

 

[ben_tajer]

Try not to poke and prod at it to much. How often have you been changing the water, what water are you using, how old is it now, what's it being kept in? Getting 1 nine day old larva doesn't give a great chance of it making it to adulthood - sure under the proper conditions most young will survive, but there will always be a few that don't. I'm surprised you only got one. You might be feeding it too much too often, and because it's full it won't eat anymore. Can't really give you anymore help unless you tell me more about how it's being kept.

 

[Lusak]

Thanks for the response. I'll try to answer your questions:

- We've been changing the water once or twice a week.
- We use aged tap water with a little bit of dechlorinator.
- We're keeping it in a plastic tub, approximately 1 foot by 6 inches with about two and a half inches of water. There is no substrate.
- It's about 4 weeks old now and still less than an inch long (about 3/4")

I generally don't poke or prod him, but occasionally I touch just the tip of his tail to get him to move when I'm cleaning up bits of worm.

As far as only getting one: a lab at Brown University, where my girlfriend is in graduate school, recently did live dissections on axolotl embryos to study development. There were a few eggs left over, and some of the students took them home. The girl we got it from had absolutely no idea how to take care of axolotls, let alone axolotl larvae. We're doing the best we can to keep the little guy alive, but it might not work out.

We have a young adult axolotl living happily, we just have no experience with larvae.

Thanks a lot for the response!

 

[ben_tajer]

well, you might not be changing the water enough, but it sounds like you're doing the right thing adding the dechlorinator. You should probably increase the water changes to once a day. Also, you will eventually have to move it to a larger container, just like a fish, its size can become limited by the size of its enclosure and the quality of its water.

It does seem a bit small for it's age, but not too worrisome.

 

[digger]

hi, i also would reccommend daily water changes, also you could try puttind daphnia in there with it, live daphnia swim quite agitatedly and therefore might stimulate him.
Daphnia live in fresh water so you wont have to much trouble with pollution.

 

[Bellabelloo]

I was trying to think back to when I was raising my larvae and if I remember correctly size and development wise your larvae is on track. I wonder if its feeding is just slowing down. I'd be tempted to try live daphnia, bloodworm etc. Also what temperature is the water, if its a little too cool it may slow down feeding and growth.


As its container is in my opinion a reasonable size I'd be tempted not to change all the water at one time, do regular spot cleans and maybe change half at the most every few days..I found with my larvae that they were more likely to die right after a complete water change ( but that may have been just me!!)

 

[ben_tajer]

I found with my larvae that they were more likely to die right after a complete water change ( but that may have been just me!!)

That's interesting, I know this is off topic, but even though I've used de-chlorinated water, I've observed that all of my losses (well those that didn't come from cannibalism), happen shortly after I've introduced new water to the tank.

 

[Bellabelloo]

I have had a few pm's regarding this from some who would rather not post direct to the forum, I suspect there is something in the process that 'shocks' them too much, maybe the temperature difference was too great. Having said this I remember one change I did and they all seemed to die in one of the containers and not the other, I was then distracted and came back to deal with them later to find a good half looking like nothing had happened.. the rest stayed dead.

 

[Lusak]

I think you may be right about its feeding slowing down. I think it might also be getting better at digesting food and doesn't need as much. The food used to come out almost the same color as it came in (very dark brown), but now it's practically white by the time it passes out.

I'm not as worried now, because the two worm bits we left in the tank last night were gone this morning. I also started up another brine shrimp hatchery to see if it likes those better.

Thanks for the help.