Half Hatched

Over the weekend, about half of the eggs hatched. Now, little axolotls are swimming around the tank. It is hard to see them unless you look really well because of all the leaves. They make them feel secure, though, so we'll leave them in for now. (no pun intended) I was able to round one up in a cup and put it under the microscope. Isn't it adorable? If you looked really closely, you could see the blood pulsing in its gills.

A baby axolotl under the microscope

Because of the new hatchlings, we decided that the goldfish bowl setup just would not do. Instead, we filled two bottles about halfway with fresh water and placed them on top of coiled heating wire. After letting the eggs hydrate for about half an hour, we added two tablespoons of aquarium salt. Then, we placed the aquarium tubes on the bottom. We have started one successful culture with this method and are hatching another. This morning, we put a few droplets of brine shrimp in the tank with an eyedropper.It was cool to see them swimming around with the axolotls! There are still occupied eggs in the tank; we are hoping for the rest of the axolotls will hatch today or tomorrow. Then we can have a lot of little baby brine shrimp swimming around and being eaten by a lot of little baby axolotls!

The new brine shrimp setup

Babies!

A few of the embryos have hatched! Right now, the babies are sitting on the bottom of their tank; that is normal behavior. They are currently feeding off of the leftover egg, so we won't feed them brine shrimp until tomorrow. The brine shrimp also had a successful hatching. We have one culture started and are planning on starting another Monday. Today I put some brine shrimp and an embryo under our microscope. It was extremely fascinating. If you focused hard enough, you could even see blood pulsing through the embryo's gills. The brine shrimp were cool as well; they swam around really quickly, and there were so many of them. Everyone at TESLA were thankful for the successful hatching - especially the axolotls! The baby brine shrimp will be their only source of food for three weeks until we are able to buy adult brine shrimp at the pet store.

Generation II

A student here at TESLA adopted a pair of axolotls towards the end of the school year last year. They were hatched as a school project. He named them Benito and Hector, not knowing that one was, in fact, female. They aren't even a year old now and have parented healthy embryos. We estimate that they were in the tank for about five days before last Tuesday when he brought them to school.

We have had the embryos in a Sterilite container with the fake plants they were laid for seven days, and they are developing quite well. We have a constant fan keeping it cool and a sponge filter for oxidation and filtering the water. We only use spring water, but will have to start dechlorinating our own water as our supply has run low.

When the babies hatch, we will feed them baby brine shrimp. Today, I set up a culture that will hopefully be productive. It is in a one gallon fish bowl with aquarium tubing supplying a constant flow of bubbles, three liters of water, three tablespoons of aquarium salt, and a warming wire wrapped around it. I put the shrimp in about 3:00 PM today, so they should hatch tomorrow.