Illness/Sickness: Sick week-old larvae (floating, red belly spots)!!!

[e23ho]

Hi there,

So one of my leucistic males and wild type females bred (unexpectedly) and I now have over 100 larvae swimming around 3 plastic bins. They're eating microworms and every time I put them in (2x per day) I notice the larvae doing little jerky movements that make me think they're hunting the worms, and I find what I *think* is baby axie poo, so I assume they're eating.

Yesterday (about a week since the first bunch have emerged from eggs, although the last few only 'hatched' about 2 days ago) I noticed some of the larvae beginning to float a bit. They continuously swim down but as soon as they relax they slowly float back up to the surface. I've got large air stones in there and I'm wondering if maybe I have them on too strong for the babies? They bubble and move the surface a fair bit and the water I keep them in isn't that deep (about an inch)... should it be deeper?

Also, today I noticed on some of my lighter (assuming leucistic) larvae some red spots on their bellies . Also there is one - and only one (which I elected to photograph since it's belly was showing) - that seems to be able to swim but can't rest on its belly. What could be the problem, and let me know what I can do to help them! I haven't really had any mortalities of healthy babies (only about 5 or 6 of those that came out weird). I'm doing another 100% water change today (been doing one every other day - I know; I promise to do daily water changes from now on), but I haven't been washing the air stones as I read in a previous post.... is this necessary on a daily basis?

Water is 100% fresh, hard/mineral-rich water kept at a fairly consistent 62F/18C. I also have a weak light that I turn on/off to simulate a day cycle since I am not home for a lot of the day and I keep the curtains closed/lights off (dark). Haven't been able to find daphnia, but I'm going to try to start a BBS tank next week - already have the tank (does it need to be cycled for BBS?).

I've included photos of my 'baby station' so you can see what I mean about the air stones as well as two of the same photo cropped differently - note, the spots are not as red as they appear, but I increased the contrast a little so you could make out shapes of the axies etc. Even so, it's fairly close.

Also, I've got an empty 15G sitting in my room.... would it be a terrible idea to put all the babies in there and just do daily water changes from the one tank?

So, maintenance, water conditions, food, red spots, and floating..... Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated!!!

Thanks,
Elaine
[eggs laid during 25-26 Oct 2011; first hatches~Nov 3-4]

 

[Neil C]

Well from what you describe you seem to be doing everything right. The red spots on the underside of your baby appears just to be the internal organs? I've found that babies start floating when they are not getting enough food so maybe you could feed them slightly more. What do you plan to feed them when they outgrow microworms as this will be fairly soon?

If you keep the babies in those shallow trays then you don't really need the airstones but it is your choice. I would just give the outside of the airstone and tubing a quick wash everythime you do a water change.

In a batch of axolotl babies there will be some that just don't thrive or have some defects. You can expect some losses so don't beat yourself up over it.

Your set up looks neat and clean so keep up the good work.


Regards Neil

 

[e23ho]

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the super-quick reply !!!

That gives me a bit of reassurance, and as of last night after the post I filled the bins to an inch from the top and turned down the air stones quite a bit (the larvae seem to like them?) - although I turn the pump off at night because all I had left was a giant one and it's quite loud in my small bedroom. Hopefully that's not too stressful.

I didn't know about the floating-when-starving thing (to put it a little more dramatically), so I'll increase the food; I don't really know how much to feed them as already I find some of the microworms collecting dead at the bottom after a few hours.

I'm thinking BBS for a short while after they grow out of microworms (the BBS at my LFS are bigger than I thought they'd be so I'm sure it's a step up for the larvae), although I'm a little paranoid about being able to rinse them well. Any suggestions? I have frozen bloodworms and live earth worms (which I'd prefer to avoid chopping if possible) for the adults so if they're big enough for bloodworms I don't mind spending some time swishing them around.

What would you recommend?

Also, if anyone has a different opinion regarding the red spots, which don't really appear to have gotten worse since yesterday (maybe the leuci babies are just getting lighter?) please let me know.

Thanks Caudata folks XD!

 

[e23ho]

Also, just so you can see the size of them, here are some photos of the babies from the 7th of November. They're currently 1-1.5 cm length, for the most part.

 

[binkiesbuns]

Brine shrimp are easy enough to rinse so dont worry. What I do is get a pair of stockings or tights and stretch the end around the frame of a fish net (with the original net tore off)- leaving a surface tight enough to hold the bbs but let the water go through. I then just pipette the wee wigglers onto it and rinse before dipping the net in with the larvae. They foul the water pretty quickly if not eaten though so you need to keep on top of it with daily water changes, for this purpose I would stick with the containers and avoid tanks until they get on a bit

 

[binkiesbuns]

PS I read on this site that air bubbles can be detrimental to bbs so I'd ditch the airstone! As long as your doing the water changes yo should have no problem x

 

[e23ho]

PS I read on this site that air bubbles can be detrimental to bbs so I'd ditch the airstone! As long as your doing the water changes yo should have no problem x

Oh thanks - I wouldn't have thought to remove the air stones for the BBS since they hatch in heavily oxygenated water. Interesting. I'm glad though, as the air stones make it difficult to clean the bins (I have to say, it's a pain to clean the things because they're so well attached to the lines; also, I've flattened two larvae in the past 2 weeks of cleaning :s). Yay .

 

[e23ho]

So, I'm in a crisis again. I have only 14 larvae left. I had removed the air stones a week ago when I went through the food crisis (which took too long to get solved, and I am quite resentful to a few authorities and organizations which had resources they were unwilling to share) and I'm doing 100% daily changes, they're eating some BBS (not as much as I'd like)... and within 3 days/2 nights I've gone from 110 to 65 to now 14.

HELP! What could be wrong, and why won't they eat?

I rinse out the BBS well (I taste them too to make sure they're not salty... eugh) and I separate the 'no-good' stuff; since yesterday I've been putting them in semi-private cells filled with BBS for 1.5hrs each in the hopes that they'd eat more but it hasn't helped much. Some of my left over larvae look fairly strong, but most are still looking like they're in critical condition.... could they just be so weak from not eating during that week when I had no access to food that they're too far gone to recover, or could something else be wrong? I just finished putting them in their cells and I've poured boiling water into their bins. I offer food 2x per day.

They haven't grown much in the past 2 weeks (of course with little food how could they?), although some are beginning to show signs of little arm buds.... I don't want to lose the last few survivors !!!

Thanks for you all who have posted replies to some of my issues. This is such a supportive forum.
-Elaine

 

[920fish]

Seems like your having the same problem as me i started out with 15 and lost 2 so far because of not doing enough water changes and not enough bbs for them. Just keep feeding them daily and changing the water some will out grow their brothers and sisters. Maybe you can try seperate each of them into their own little container like how I did those that are in their own containers are growing faster than the one in my 10 gallon fish tank. If you don't have enough container you can try buying water bottles from the store and drink them and just cut a opening and use the plastic bottles to hold all the smaller weaker one. If you have black worms, you can try feeding baby black worms to them because out of all of mine the one that ate the black worms grew bigger than the one munching on bbs alone. Good luck.

 

[e23ho]

Seems like your having the same problem as me i started out with 15 and lost 2 so far because of not doing enough water changes and not enough bbs for them. Just keep feeding them daily and changing the water some will out grow their brothers and sisters. Maybe you can try seperate each of them into their own little container like how I did those that are in their own containers are growing faster than the one in my 10 gallon fish tank. If you don't have enough container you can try buying water bottles from the store and drink them and just cut a opening and use the plastic bottles to hold all the smaller weaker one. If you have black worms, you can try feeding baby black worms to them because out of all of mine the one that ate the black worms grew bigger than the one munching on bbs alone. Good luck.

Thanks for the reply. I don't think it's the water changes as I have been doing 100% water changes every day, and I had been separating them for feeding into ice cube trays filled with BBS, so it's not like they didn't have the chance to eat; I also put microworms in as they use to love them but started to ignore them a of that week I had a food crisis, and they continued to ignore them until today .

As of today, my last 5 larvae have passed . I just don't get it - they were swimming around yesterday and appearing much stronger, some even had little orange bellies full of BBS and I watched three of them actively eating it! See photos attached for images of my ice cube feeding, the little golden belly, and of a dead axie larvae with a curled in tail. They all had gills flared forward in the last week, and every time they died their tails curled. Does this mean anything (the tail)?

Thanks to everyone who tried to help out. Support on forums like these is so important to ensuring healthy, happy animals!

Elaine

 

[920fish]

Curl tail is a sign of stress. Probably when your changing water and putting in new water it creates too much current and they probably stress them alot. Also ice cube isn't that big of a space so they probably died from too much bbs dieing in the water and killing them. A good site to check out is the axolotl.org site.