How to Care for Tiger Salamander Larvae

Video Transcript

"Now, once the Tiger Salamander larvae hatch, you can put them in a small container. A five gallon tank will work real well. The larvae will grow, so again, you are going to need to increase the size of the enclosure as the larvae salamander develops. Salamanders, larvae salamanders, are cannibalistic. They will eat each other. So as they get bigger, their appetites will increase. It might be a good idea to separate them. When they are born, when they hatch out of their egg, they have feathers or antler like structures on the sides of their head. Those are their gills. And they use their gills to absorb the oxygen through the water. No in front of me, I don't have a larvae salamander, but instead I have an aquatic salamander called a Siren. This is a greater siren, it doesn't like being in this small enclosure, as you can tell. But it has external gills just like that of a larvae Tiger Salamander. Now, larvae Tiger Salamanders are vigorous eaters. You can easily feed them small red worms; chopped up pieces of earth worm work very well. You can offer it to them on some forceps. You can also offer them some other small aquatic invertebrates. Like I said before, you want to keep a close eye on them because they will eat each other. When they start getting larger, you are going to have to put them in a well-filtered tank because they will create a lot of waste. I prefer to use canister filers, biological filters that keep the water pretty nice and clean. When they are smaller you don’t need a filter on them, filters actually suck up the babies. So you want to avoid filters. Just do a small water change every other day or so. Again, you want to keep the water temperature around the same as you kept the eggs; around sixty-five to seventy-five degrees. "