yay!live food finally! oh-oh, i dont know how to keep it alive!

R

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Hey there
on the 6th of september my axolotls Luca and Oliver suprised me with some axolotl eggs. About 25% of the hatched about 15 days later. Up untill now i have been feeding them on brineshrimp using a homemade brineshrimp set up which has been working well untill i could find some daphnia. Yesterday whilst at work (at the local pet shop) I found a lady who said she could give me some daphnia and white worms. So today i went and collected them. For the daphnia i have set up a drum with half clean water and half water from our outside fish pond, I aquarium that has just water from the fish pond (both of these are outside. And inside I have a small fishbowl with just water from the fish pond. Floating on top of each i have some lettuce leaves. the water is very brown and i was just wondering if this is going to feed them?? My boss told me this was all i need but somehow i think it is more complicated than that? Does the inside one need oxygen going through the water?

And as for the white worms they are in an ice cream container in damp dirt with a piece of grain bread sitting on top. the worms are very tiny and thin but i really dont know what to do with them lol.
any help is appreciated :)
p.s. all the axolotls are yellow, yay! :) something i have been trying to achieve for 5 years!
 
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I keep daphnia for my fish, also I keep them in case I get baby axolotls (I have a male and female axie in the same tank). I have my daphnia in a tub outside and feed them each day with green water. You can produce green water by leaving water to 'mature' in plastic bottles in a windowsill or any sunny spot. If you can find a source of green water (algae) to start the maturing process, even better. I have an old fish tank outside that sits in the sun, this is my store of algae water and I top it up with algae water from the 2ltr plastic bottles I have on the window ledge as they mature. You need to keep a 'production line' of algae water going to keep your daphnia fed. I tend to add about a pint or so of algae water each day and remove a pint or so of daphnia to feed the fish. In this way you keep the population of the daphnia under control and can produce enough algae water to keep them well fed. (If your algae water is green enough you should only need to feed them every 2 days)
There are other ways to feed daphnia, using live yeast or even a dog biscuit dropped in the water, but I think using algae water is the easiest way, you can actually see if they have enough food, once the water is clear you know they need feeding again.
I was told that the algae water turns green quicker if you add oxygen, but I have actually found that the bottles without the air pipe going in turn greener than those with, but that is just my experience. Daphnia don't need an air supply, in fact fine bubbles from an airstone can cause them to float and die.

This is a link about daphnia, it might give you some more info.
http://www.caudata.org/daphnia/#cult1

Sorry for the essay!
 
the old aquarium i have is sitting on the table in the sun outside where it gets morning sun and a little afternoon sun, is this enough? this aquarium has daphnia in it and they were all still swimming and alive this morning XD So i guess this can only be good. The yellow drum sits in relativly the same spot but only half the surface gets sunlight and the one inside dosnt get sunlight at all so i will put that outside today :). Is there anything i can put into the plastic bottles of water to make them go green faster? Also as i went to feed my axies yesterday i faced a new problem. how do i seperate the baby daphnia from the adult daphnia? I would put some in with them to breed and suplly food there and there but im not sure if the axies will appreciate the brown water that the daphnia need.

thanks for all your help so far :)

anyone know what to do with the white worm?
 
I got a bunch of white worms as well and would really like to know what the heck to do with them...they are sooooo tiny how do u even attempt to get them out to use as feed??
 
I harvest whiteworms by putting a soaked piece of bread on top of the substrate. About 1-2 days later, there will be a thick layer of whiteworms right under the bread. I scrape off this layer with a spoon and rinse them several times. This yields a fairly clean bunch of whiteworms. If there's a tiny bit of substrate mixed in, don't worry about it.
 
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