My larvae ate!

[karen]

After a week of worrying if my larvae were eating or not, I decided to give their tank a good cleaning to get all the little dead worm bits and things that I couldn't reach with the siphon out.
I chased the little guys around with a paper cup for a long time before I caught them all. I gave them some blackworms when I put them back in their nice clean tank, but I thought they'd be too stressed to eat.

I just checked back - and most of the worms are dead with little bits of worm guts (eeew) coming out. My little larvae are finally eating!
Before this when I put the worms in I would check back hours later to find them still alive and apparently untouched.
Any idea why they would suddenly find the worms more appealing? I've been doing 20-30% water changes in their tank daily so it wasn't THAT big a difference in water quality.

Also, I have 1 larvae that seems to have trouble staying on the bottom - it tends to float up. Is there anything I can do for that one?

Thsnks.

 

[benjamin]

Well found with my larvae that when I moved them around the house some would float, but it would only last a few hours and they would go back down. I assumed that this was somehow stress related. No I also had larvae that floated and died early on. I believe this has something to do with under eating.

 

[jesper]

About the larvae floating - quite usual - gases in their intestine, nothing to worry about. It will pass in a couple of hours sometimes a little longer. Some larvae will float intentionally because they are too lazy to go all the way down after going up for air(depends on water depth I assume). I have observed this mainly for bigger, older larvae.

When they float through "nature's course" and not by their own "free" will they tend to be found upside down, usually a high energetic, certainly not very tactical and therefore quite unusual position for a larva.

(Message edited by jesper on April 10, 2005)