Urgent help required regarding feeding

[decambla]

Im stressing out a bit at the moment. My husband decided to have a grand final day party yesterday and needless to say many beverages were consumed by a number of guests. One of these guests must have had a wander around our back yard last night and has knocked over my daphnia culture. Ive lost it all. The brine shrimp I was hatching, didnt hatch. Think it must have been a dud batch of eggs. I could see a small amount of hatched BBS but a lot of unhatched eggs still at the bottom. I couldnt seperate the two so didnt want to risk feeding the larvae these. I went to our LPS this morning but they have NO live food so gave me frozen mysis shrimp?? Ive cut it up finely and give it too my 3 week old larvae but theyre not touching it.
I have no access to any live food, cant get brine shrimp eggs til tomorrow (and then theyll have to hatch). All I have here is adult axolotl pellets, 100% dried whole shrimp (turtle food) and the frozen mysis shrimp. Is there anything anyone could suggest or are any of these suitable?

 

[totallyrad]

Does no one sell any worms any where close to you? I think most axolotls can't resist a big wriggly worm Are they not eating the food you have now or something?

 

[yellowpebble]

i'm assuming they are babies if you are ding daphnia and brine shrimp. If there are unhatched eggs, do not give u on the batch, they probably need more time. Try increasing the tempurature.

the babies will be ok for a week without food, but of corse get some as soon a possible. They need moving food, so crushing up some pellets or hard boiled egg yolk and swirling the water around will work for a minute untill it all settles. Keep agitating the water and they should snap at the bits floating around. Remeber to do regular water changes because both spoil the water quickly.

Depending on how big thyt are, they may be able to eat frozen bloodworm. If they are anywhere near starting to grow their back legs, moving a bit of bloodworm in front of their face with tweezers should make them snap.

good luck

 

[iSuzie]

Okay so my advice is try cut up tiny pieces of bloodworms. Now the best way to get a baby to eat them is this. You have to remember this they can not smell it untill they have all four leg's grown, they hunt using sight and movement so sight they do not have much of, leaving only movement, if u get a clear plastic straw and very slowly move the cut up pieces of blood worms or frozen daphnia or what they gave you frozen mysis shrimp witch I don't know what that is.. lol... but whatever you try u have to remember that movement in the water may also scare them. So while moving the food around you have to mimic the small movements of the food as tho it was alive.

Also I have BBS eggs and live baby brine shrimp at my house I live an hour out of kyneton and you are move than welcome to come and get some if needed. Let me know if you need to so I can out on extra BBS for you i have a set up that only requires 10 hours for them to hatch
Let me know how you go! GOOD LUCK

 

[decambla]

Sorry I wasnt very clear in my early post, a bit stressed out

The babies are 3 weeks old and about 2cms long. They have just started growing arm buds but no signs of back legs.

There is one petshop where I am that sell earth worms, at a disgustingly marked up price. There isnt anywhere that sells anything like daphnia, brine shrimp, live blood worms etc.

The brine shrimp hatchery had been going for over 48hrs in a small laundry with a heater keeping the room at 30 degrees. I cant understand why they didnt hatch but boy did they stink.

I thought that they needed to eat up tp twice a day at this stage? Im happy to get another batch of BBS going tomorrow if theyll last that long.

 

[iSuzie]

They do need to eat twice a day at this stage. And they may get air bubbles from not being fed while you are out of food, but this wont kill them. If they get floaty then lower the water levels and separate them so they don't bump into each other to keep them calm. If worse comes to worse im an hour out of Melbourne and have hatched BBS all the time as i have 150 baby's at the moment

 

[Kaysie]

Try taking the frozen food and getting it to move in the water with an airstone or bubbling a turkey baster. The movement might encourage them to eat.

 

[NooNoo Kz]

Feel free to come get some more daphnia if you need it Crystal! The aquarium 15 minutes from my house sells lots of daphnia all the time for about $6 a bag, and it will probably be twice as much as what I gave you in the start.

 

[Kribby]

If you have brine shrimp eggs you can also decapsulate them and feed them unhatched. This removes complications from the shell since it is removed and the light eggs also move around in the water column and stimulate feeding. When I was feeding my newt babies I would hatch the BBS and feed everything since they were decapped eggs. If you are in a pinch that might help.