Thought I had two girls, now I've got eggs everywhere...

[diggityDawg]

Just got my first pair of axies about 2 months ago. I was told they were both female, and a friend of mine who used to breed them also thought they were both female. Then this morning I noticed I had eggs all over the plants in their tank. So I haven't yet decided if I want to hatch them, but I'm guessing I need to decide quickly or the axies will consume them all? It looks like the smaller one, which I presume is the male, is going around eating them. Is that pretty normal?

So if I do decide to hatch them, can I just put the plants into a tupperware with cold water? One of the plants is live, and attached to a rock. The other two plants are plastic... Any advice?

Thanks!

 

[Kaysie]

That's par for the course. They're not picky about what they eat (mostly), even their own young.

If you do want to hatch them, I'd remove the ones you do want to raise (don't try to raise them all!), and put them in a container with tank water from the parent's tank. I usually remove mine from the plants. The eggs are usually fairly firm initially. I slide the plant leaves through the middle of two fingers, a little like a tube of toothpaste, and the eggs usually come off with no damage.

 

[christen525]

The same thing happened with my axies earlier this month...except we've had them together for about a year : )
I took the eggs off of the plants as well, but with my fingernail. They are surprisingly strong.
I gave most of them away to people here on Caudata and kept some to raise myself. Caring for the eggs is the easy part. If you want to keep them though make sure you have baby brine shrimp or daphnia for when they hatch. good luck!

 

[diggityDawg]

Thanks for the great advice! A friend (the one who thought they were both females) took a bunch of eggs off one plant, I'll probably put another plant in a container and try to hatch them. The rest I'll take to a local pet store that sells axies and see if I can get some trade credit for other stuff - I also keep snakes and lizards and always need food!

I've seen people say you need to do a full water change on the eggs every day - so do I just empty out the entire container they're in and put new water in every day? We have soft water here, do I need to add anything to the water to increase the salts? I think I read that on the main site...

Thanks again!
Eddie

 

[Kaysie]

I never did water changes on eggs. Once they hatch you'll need to do water changes, as the babies (and their food) will be producing ammonia. Even then, I usually only did 50% every other day, and I did it with tank water from the adult tank. I did usually vacuum up waste with a turkey baster every day.

 

[siona]

Any updates on the eggs? Are you going to hatch them?

 

[diggityDawg]

Any updates on the eggs? Are you going to hatch them?

Yes I am hatching them! It's really exciting watching them develop! I was at a local pet shop and asked about them, since they have a small group they haven't yet bred. They said they would definitely be interested in the hatchlings and would give me cash or credit for them. So I pulled most of the eggs from the tank and put them in a small container with an air stone. They seem to be doing well (see pic of them, and their parents).

Thanks so much for the great advice! I'll definitely post pics when they hatch!

 

[twistedfisher]

get the cigars ready cause you gonna have to pass out a ton of them if your gonna give 1 stogie for each baby!

LOL glad you decided to hatch them. It is highly rewarding to watch the eggs develop and even more rewarding to see them get their little front legs!

Thats where my albinos are right now. Got their little front legs and are monster eaters.

Start learning about hatching brine shrimp and get a culture of daphnia going cause your gonna need them both! They will eat you outta house and home

 

[siona]

I love watching mine - they look different ever day The parents look lovely! I've got some brineshrimp eggs bubbling away - I've never hatched them before and I need to perfect it before they hatch!

 

[twistedfisher]

What i do is in a 2 liter hatcher i put 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda and 1 teaspoon of salt. The baking soda will make it so you can use less salt by raising the pH. I keep mine at room temp but am thinking about moving it to a heated closet to lower the hatch time for them. at room temp they take about 18-24 hours in my house and some days im literally checking them every hour waiting for them to pop so i can feed the fish/axies.

I also recommend to get daphnia going since it will not be long untill they are gobbling them too

 

[diggityDawg]

Start learning about hatching brine shrimp and get a culture of daphnia going cause your gonna need them both! They will eat you outta house and home

A friend of mine has hatched axies before, and he's helping me out with this whole thing. I guess I need to start the shrimp now, just in case... Where do I get dubia cultures? What's a "2 liter hatcher"?

Thanks, can't wait to see the little ones squeak out of their eggs!!

 

[twistedfisher]

umm lemme dig through my pics i may have a pic of one.............

ok here goes an excerpt from the ebook im writing and a pic of my brine shrimp hatchery;

The items we will need to culture brine shrimp are:

• 2 Empty 2 liter bottles
• A piece of air line tubing
• Air control valve
• Air pump
• Aquarium salt
• Brine shrimp net
• Turkey baster
• Flash light
• Aquarium sealant

Now that we got eggs what do we do with them? Well since our fish don’t eat omelets and since we don’t want to even think about cracking these little suckers I guess we gotta hatch them out! There are many commercially sold hatcheries and even more created by the home hobbyist but I personally like the ones made from 2 liter soda bottles and a good ole air pump. Firstly its cheap/free and secondly cause its recycling and a good turn for the Earth. There are a few good tutorials on how to make them online but ill give mine a quick run through here for you. I take two, 2 liter soda bottles and cut one just below the taper and the other about three inches up from the bottom. I then make sure the one that I cut the bottom off of has the cap seated tightly and I drill a ¼” hole in the center of the cap. I then affix an air line to the cap with aquarium safe silicone and route it out through a hole in the right side up bottle and connect a air control valve. This is a simple but highly effective brine shrimp hatchery that can be created in less than 30 minutes and will last for years of use. It is always a good idea to have two hatcheries going at once so as to be able to feed everyday. You would be harvesting one each day and restarting it.
For batch hatching the following is done. I mix 2 teaspoons of aquarium salt to 1 gallon of aged water to make the basic “brine” solution to hatch the eggs in. I also add 1 teaspoon of baking soda to raise the pH. I fill my inverted bottle to about 1” from the top with the brine solution and then add about a half teaspoon of eggs to the mix. After I add them I turn the air on to a slow but steady flow of about 2-3 bubbles per second. I leave my eggs for a full 24 hours to hatch and keep them at room temperature with the air on during the hatching stage.
Harvesting is easy so long as you follow a few easy steps. Firstly turn off the air and allow your fresh hatched shrimp to settle for 30 mins to an hour. During this time the culture should be placed in a dark area so that the brine shrimp will collect to the lower levels of the cylinder. Upon the waiting period when you reproach take a flash light and place it beside the hatchery. Now as you watch you will see the brine shrimp collecting on the side of the light and the egg casings floating on top of the water. The best way ive found to remove these egg casings is to use a brine shrimp net and skim the top most layers of water to remove them. It is easy to then run water backwards thru the net and wash them down the sink. Now that the brine shrimp have collected on the one side of the hatchery and you have removed the cyst casings it is time to get your fish its tasty treat outta the salt water. A lot of fish keepers salt their tanks and just as many do not. So if you salt you may not mind a bit of the salt getting into your tank through the feeding of brine shrimp, but if you do not here is a way to remove the salt prior to feeding them. I use a turkey baster to suction batches of the brine shrimp and then shoot them into my brine shrimp net while it’s over the sink and catch the shrimp while the salt water goes into it and away to the sewage. The shrimp can then be rinsed with fresh water to remove and additional salt that is remaining on them. The net can then be swished in the desired tank to feed the fish in said tank.
Brine shrimp should be fed with moderation and some care needs to be taken as to avoid over feeding of them. The brine shrimp only live in your tank for a few hours at best and then become a quick bioload problem if they are overfed. As with all live foods brine shrimp are a great way to feed your fish live food.

This pic shows one of mine with green water in it so you can see the bubbles coming up from teh bottom

 

[twistedfisher]

so far as daphnia go i have cultures if your interested in getting one PM me.

 

[diggityDawg]

My babies hatched, and it looks like the vast majority have come out of the eggs!! So I've had them in two tubs the entire time, and now I'd like to move them out and into a better enclosure for their first couple weeks of life. In particular, one of the tubs still has a lot of sand from the tank they came from since it was on the eggs, etc when I detached them from the plant. So what's the best way to move them to a new tub without hurting/killing them? I can only think of sucking them up with a baster, but I would imagine I would lose quite a few that way? Any tips?

Also, the other tub has some hatched, but a lot of them are still in the egg, attached to the plastic plant. They appear to be very developed, should I cut the eggs?

Thanks!

 

[siona]

They look so cute! Mine are being so lazy - it's been 16 days now grrr...

I'm not sure about removing the sand - I had the same problem but I've been removing what I can bit by bit with the baster as they're still in the eggs.

as for removing the larvae from the eggs manually I've heard a few people who are strongly against this practice as they'll hatch when they're ready. But then again I've heard a few people who have raised perfectly healthy axies this way...hmm...sorry that's not that much help!

 

[diggityDawg]

They look so cute! Mine are being so lazy - it's been 16 days now grrr...

It's hard waiting, but at least they don't have long incubation periods. I have a friend who's incubating green tree python eggs right now, and he's got about 40 days left! Torture.

as for removing the larvae from the eggs manually I've heard a few people who are strongly against this practice as they'll hatch when they're ready. But then again I've heard a few people who have raised perfectly healthy axies this way...hmm...sorry that's not that much help!

So I spent a good deal of time getting them into their new tub, and sucking up the little bit of egg matter, dirt, etc. that came with them. I used a small children's medicine dropper that we had, which worked perfectly. I did end up attempting to get a lot of babies out of their eggs using this technique where I sucked up a small section of the egg sack to get the egg off the plant, then I used small scissors to cut the egg. As soon as I broke the membrane the little axie went swimming off to the bottom. As far as I can tell, and I am NO expert mind you, I didn't lose one. But who knows what will happen in the next couple days. Those babies could be deformed, or have crooked tails, etc. I just don't know. But since the majority hatched out 2-3 days ago, I thought it was time to go ahead and get the rest out. I now have somewhere between 60-90 (rough estimate) baby axies, and it's VERY cool! See pics attached. I'm pretty sure I have a bunch of albino, since many have eyes I can't see, but appear to be pink when I use my zoom lens. Regardless, I'm excited to get these guys going and watch them grow!

Best of luck with yours, be sure to post pics when they hatch out!

 

[axolotlfriend]

the parents are both wild, right?

thats pretty cool some albino. has it been hard feeding that many mouths?

 

[The Banana]

Aww.. CUTE!
Congrats on them, I hope they all survive.
We have chickens and got your broody bantam hen (nesting mini-female) some fertilized eggs.
Three didn't hatch, and we've read that when they don't hatch it is best not to help them out, because if they are too weak to hatch, well then they won't go to well in life, so you aren't doing them any favours. We hatched open the un-hatched eggs and THIS is what happens. I'm assuming axies would be similar.
But it is entirely up to you. Sorry about that.
Must say, your photos are really good! Very clear for such tiny things.
Good luck with them!

 

[siona]

So cute! I like the little wiggly one in the first pic 3 of mine hatched overnight - SO exciting! But I only have 20 - I couldn't imagine 60-90 hungry mouths! Good luck

 

[mewsie]

I now have somewhere between 60-90 (rough estimate) baby axies, and it's VERY cool!

So, you named them all yet?

Love the pics, I like the wriggly one, too!