As our axolotls reached adolescence, we were able to determine that Wooper is a male and Kipper is a female, so we should have seen this coming. One night as we were studying, we noticed that Kipper was acting really weird and stressed. That's when we realized that Kipper was laying eggs... everywhere. We were not prepared.
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| Mama Kipper |
Thankfully, we discovered that the eggs usually take about two weeks to hatch, so we had some time to do some research. Most of the information used to learn how to take care of baby axolotls cam from axolotl.org and caudata.org. Axolotls will try to eat anything that moves, so we decided to separate the babies from their parents.
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| Day 4 after eggs were laid |
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| Day 7 after eggs were laid |
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| Hatching Day: Day 11 after eggs were laid |
Ours hatched a little faster than two weeks. We had about 80 successfully hatch.
At first they were all the same color, but after about a week you can start to see the color pigments fading from the lighter axolotls.
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| 3 Days Old |
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| 6 Days Old |
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| 10 Days Old |
About 2 weeks old during feeding time. I apologize
that I couldn't get it in focus.
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| 2 weeks old |
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| They are getting bigger! We had to move some to a larger container. |
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| April 20: Some of the babies are large enough to eat bloodworms. |
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| April 22: You can tell how much they have grown by comparing them to the crevice in the container. |
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| April 24: They are growing little arms and fingers. |
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| April 24: Another angle of the arms. |
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| April 26: We noticed that they were looking kind of crowded, so we have dispersed the larger ones to a new container. |
April 29: Feeding time.
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| It is difficult to tell them apart, except this one... It is the only leucistic which has spots! |
Today is the day that we separated the parents, so we don't have this situation again in the near future. We coaxed Wooper into a container for transfer, and I was amazed at how large he has gotten! He is not even one year old yet, and he is about 10 inches. Here are the images for comparison, the containers are the same size.
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| April 30: The little ones needed to be spread out more. The orange in the bottom-right container is baby brine shrimp. |
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| May 2 (32 days): Many of the babies have back legs now. |
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| May 2 (32 days): They have started to come to the surface when we get close. They know that humans bring food. |
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| May 2 (32 days): Ohai! You haz wirms for me? |
Sorry for the lack of updates! Both Brittany and I moved. I am still in Ames, though. She put me (Jack) in charge of the blog now. I'm almost done settling in, and so are the hatchlings!
May 9 (39 days): We have been having some biting problems recently. A couple of our hatchlings have lost limbs. :( It's too bad they don't have regeneration superpowers... oh wait, they do... This little fella had his right hand nipped off a few days ago (once again, sad face), but you can see the fingers are growing back already! I don't know about you, but I'm amazed by this. In the meantime, I will need to find a solution to this biting problem.
May 10 (40 days): PROBLEM SOLVED!
May 10 (40 days): Here is a close up of one of our wild types.
PARTY-LOTLS!
Sorry, that was a bit obnoxious...
May 19 (49 days): Yup, it turns out quite a few of the hatchlings inherited the GFP trait from their parents. Behold the glowy axolotls! This is a leucistic under a black light. The wild types are still glowy, but not nearly as glowy as the leucistics. Sorry for the poor quality, my camera did not like the black light. Out of the 32 hatchlings I have, 21 of them are GFP. If you want one of these, please let me know.
Don't worry, the axolotls aren't out of focus in real life.
The only good picture that turned out it a creepy picture of Wooper! Those glowy eyes...
>(o_o)<
I don't have any pictures of Kipper because she is with Brittany. Brittany said she wanted to get a black light too, so maybe we will see some pictures of her glowy hatchlings and glowy Kipper too!
I will update this post with more pictures as they continue to grow. If you are interested in owning one or more of these awesome adorable creatures, please contact Jack at isuaxolotl@gmail.com.
