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what in the ????? are these and can I feed them to baby axys


darkfur

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:o saw in a tray of water housing some plants today

Moving very quickly, similar in appearance to poppyseeds, perhaps a little smaller

couldn't get a great pic

greeblies.jpg

am getting some axolotl eggs soon and wondered if these greeblies may be potential live food

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just stuck one under the 'scope and it seems to be an ostracod :o

here is a similar one from caudata.org

ostracod1.jpg

which assures me they are fine and edible. There are some other interesting greeblies in there today, some mossies which I will cull out but also some bloodworms :D

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi Darkfur

They most certainly can be fed to Axys. Well I do with no problems. Have heaps of them here.

I have two different containers and one has green pods and the other has brown/yellow. I think it depends on what they eating. The yellow ones have heaps of pine pollen in with them.

I put some under a microscope and they looked just like the pic you posted. A small shell with feelers on one side.

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Yeah, ostracods.

They have two hard shells and tiny legs that come out the middle to swim with. Very cool.

My understanding was they were hard and not really eaten, but if something does eat them - great! :)

The 'ostrac' part probably comes from the greek 'ostraca' meaning broken pottery. The word 'ostracism' comes from an Athenian system they used to have each year when they could vote which citizen got sent into exile for ten years. They wrote the name of the person they wanted ostracised on a piece of broken pottery as their vote.

Anyone want to return to that system? ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism

You see the same word in other places too. The early armoured fish were ostracoderms ('brokenpottery-skin')

Um yeah, that was the long answer.... :oops: but now you will never forget what they are called ;)

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Hi Darkfur

They most certainly can be fed to Axys. Well I do with no problems. Have heaps of them here.

I have two different containers and one has green pods and the other has brown/yellow. I think it depends on what they eating. The yellow ones have heaps of pine pollen in with them.

I put some under a microscope and they looked just like the pic you posted. A small shell with feelers on one side.

Diet affecting colour could be why mine are dark, there are rotting oak leaves in that container

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