Please help me!!!!!

[kellsnotokay52]

My firebelly newt tadpoles have been doing pretty well. They have been eating freshly hatched shrimp brine. When i feed them iput the shrimp brine in a bowl with a coffee filter and rinse them under water a few times then drain the water and put them in the tadpole tank. am i doing something wrong? when i did the water change they seemed more active. the water is 64ish. i do see that they are eating because their tummies are orange. I checked in on them tonight and they look dead! They move slightly when I move the water. Are they less active at night. Are they less active after they eat? What can I do?

 

[Kaysie]

No, that's exactly how you should be feeding brine shrimp. You'll need to change the water ~5 hours after feeding, as the brine shrimp die in fresh water. Without water changes, they'll foul the water pretty quickly.

Make sure your water changes are using water that's the same temperature. Larvae aren't especially active. If they're moving too much, that's actually a bad sign.

 

[kellsnotokay52]

I ended up losing about 15 tadpoles I was told to try distilled water which I just purchased at the store. Because I'm thinking this was a water issue?

 

[AngieD]

I might be wrong on this, but I think distilled water is quite low in oxygen. I get a bucket of tap water and add some water treatment to it when I'm dealing with amphibians.

Don't lose heart, these things happen

 

[mr cyclone]

Dont use chemicals use
Rainwater
Cycled tank water
Tapwater that has been airated by an airstone(works ok in uk tapwater)
Also i would use pond water,infusoria and daphnia as thos lasts long in tanks unlike brineshrimp.and also ive never had a problem with really small larvae eating baby daphnia or minute organisms unseen to the human eye that will be in pondwater and daphnia bags

 

[Azhael]

Like Mr.Cyclone i would recommend water from a cycled tank or at least aged water. Daphnia are a better choice if you can find it because they are fresh-water.
The best results are typically achieved with cycled tanks with plenty of vegetation. Trying to raise them in small containers with frequent changes doesn´t usually work well and people suffer heavy losses.

If you have a spare tank and you cycled it and fill it with plants you could chuck a few eggs or larvae in and pretty much forget about them until a couple of months later you start seeing well developed larvae with four legs at which point you just have to start adding suitable foods. Until then, they´ll thrive on their own, consuming Cyclops and other typical aquarium microfauna.

 

[Kaysie]

It was certainly the distilled water that did your larvae in. It has absolutely no minerals whatsoever, so amphibians will leach ions into the water. Unfortunately, tiny larvae are much more susceptible than adults due to their higher surface area to volume ratio.

 

[kellsnotokay52]

Re: Please help me!!!!

When my newt tadpoles died they weren't in the distilled water they were in my tap water that measured quite well on all the water tests. I think I might have changed the water too much. How often should I feed them, they are eating the shrimp brine so I know that I need to remove them after 5 hours.

 

[Kaysie]

Re: Please help me!!!!

When they're young, have food in their tank constantly.