Oddball larvae

[rachel1]

I have been raising a small clutch from my wildtype male and my golden albino female. I have mostly wildtype, but about 25% are white with just a little color on their heads and down the spine. Would they be considered heavily freckled leucistics? They have a lot of speckling for leucistic, but they are significantly lighter than the wilds. Here's a picture of one, and with a wildtype sibling for comparison. Anybody had babies like these before? How did they turn out as adults?

 

[auntiejude]

If you look at the pattern of freckles on the tail it looks like a wildtype. But you have to remeber that wildtypes come in lots of different shades - green, brown, black, tan - any combination. But it could also be leucistic, you'll just have to wait a few weeks to find out.

Do you know the parents of your adults?

 

[rachel1]

My wildtype male had a melanoid mother and either golden albino or leucistic father. His siblings were wildtype, leucistic, white albino, and golden albino. I don't know enough about genetics to know if that helps narrow down which one was his dad.
I have no history on my golden albino female.

 

[rachel1]

I'm excited to see how they turn out as they get bigger! I'll have to post updated pics as they grow.

 

[auntiejude]

My wildtype male had a melanoid mother and either golden albino or leucistic father. His siblings were wildtype, leucistic, white albino, and golden albino.

Could be either, but I'm betting on the leucistic being grandpa.

Your female must carry a leucistic gene to produce leucistic babies, it will be interesting if you come back in a few weeks with new photos.

 

[rachel1]

So it turns out I had both light colored wildtype and leucistic. The wildtype developed more and more freckles on the tail as it grew. The others were leucistic, and the speckling looks smaller now, I think because all the new tissue they are growing is white. Here is the light wildtype, two leucistic, and my biggest wildtype-almost 1.25 inches now!

 

[lovesheraxies]

They are lighter wild types, I have quite a few myself, they may stay light or darken as they get bigger.

 

[rachel1]

A good number of them are definitely freckled leucistic. My understanding of the leucistic mutation is that the pigment fails to migrate off the neural crest (head and sometimes spine) in developing larvae. When they were young, the leucistic and light wilds looked identical. Now they are very obviously different. In the leucistics, you can still see the spots they originally had down the spine. There is no pigment anywhere that they did not have when they hatched out. The light wilds have been developing pigment in places that they didn't have it at first, like across their tails. Here's a couple pics of them now. Two leucy, 2 light wild, dark wild, and my most freckled leucy. They are approaching 2 inches, and growing in their back legs.

 

[lQdALPHA]

They are so cute
please keep updating!

 

[rachel1]

Here you go! 7 weeks old when I took these pics.

 

[rachel1]

Here they are at 9 weeks old. They are around 3.5 to 4" All the leucistics have new homes, so no more updates on them.

 

[rachel1]

They are now 12 weeks old. About 5" long at this point. Pardon the feeding time pics, they're cutest when they're begging! The green with black spots is one of the lighter wilds, and I'm keeping that one. :happy:

 

[Lars]

How did you get them to grow so quickly? I have three babies. Two are siblings, a leucistic and a wild type, and a melanoid from a different clutch (and breeder all together). The siblings are 24 weeks old (hatch day of Feb. 27) and are only about 5-6" long. Well, the leucistic is about 5.75" while the wild type is about 5". The breeder of the melanoid was unsure of the hatch date. He is a little smaller, about 4" or so. They have grown a lot since I have got them, but it just seemed that yours grew much quicker in a shorter amount of time, like half the amount of time lol. Just curious. I'm trying to offer them a variety diet of sinking newt/salamander pellets, some floating pellets, frozen bloodworms (their favorite, so they receive that the most) and some earthworms, when they'll actually keep them down. Is there something that I am doing wrong? These are my first lotls obviously.

 

[Lars]

By the way, I received the siblings around May 30th, so they were with the breeder for almost three months. The melanoid I got around the end of June. His growth seems to be fine though.

 

[rachel1]

My babies had access to live food 24/7- daphnia and blackworms. When they got around 3" long, I started offering chunks of earthworm twice daily, in addition to as much blackworms as they wanted. I'm thinking that food wasn't a limiting factor, so they grew really quickly. I also kept this batch separately in individual tubs with 100% water changes twice daily, so maybe lower competition and clean water also played a role. I have read that genetics also play a role in growth rates. I was kind of hoping they would grow a bit slower, as I had to find homes pretty quickly!

 

[rachel1]

Also, the bigger they get, the slower they grow. So while they may go from 2" to 3" pretty quickly, the jump from 6" to 7" will take a lot longer.

 

[auntiejude]

I agree that nutrition early on is a major factor in growth. Plenty of food in the first 3 months will give them a great start in life.