Adf eggs/tadpoles

[Adfowner]

My 2 adfs recently had some eggs for the first time, maybe 20 or so, and 7 of them hatched. They are a week and 3 days old today. I am down to 4 of them now, and one additional egg that is developing nicely, but I am wondering why they are not surviving. Here is my set up:
2 plastic cups with water from the larger tank in them, one for the tads and one for water changes. Right when they hatched I fed them a little bit of infusoria I grew and also put some dead plant matter from the tank in there for them to eat from. Now they are eating baby brine shrimp I hatch for them, and once they get big enough I will feed them frozen baby brine shrimp which I already have in my freezer. I do minuscule water changes at least 4 times a day so as to make it as unnoticeable as possible. So why are they dying? One of them died early. 2 of them looked very very skinny when they died last night, perhaps they couldn't find the food? and one of them is still alive but is bloated even with nothing in his belly. I'm confused. Help is appreciated.

 

[Adfowner]

Could it really just be natural causes, or is there something wrong with my setup? What are the most common reasons for their death when they are tads?

 

[Sharpchick]

Is the water heated from any source?

If I wanted to raise them, I'd have used a breeder net in the main tank to keep the water quality the same and also give them access to light and heat.

Also ADFs are obligate carnivores. Dead plants aren't of a whole lot of use. When you see tadpoles picking at plants, they are getting the miniscule bugs and stuff we can't even see off of them. That's why the brine shrimp are a better food source.

ETA: You'll get more hits on this thread if you go back to mine where you asked for help, and post a link to it. Not a lot of folks will go searching for someone's thread without a link to make it easy for them.

 

[Adfowner]

Thanks for the advice. I will look into breeder nets and perhaps consider making my own. The water is not heated but I live in Florida and my house is quite temperate, usually 74-76 degrees. I read that the tadpoles preferred cooler water so I decided that the heater in the main tank would not be necessary, but for the filtration I can see a breeder net being a better choice. I also read when I was doing research on how to care for them that they cannot eat whole baby brine shrimp right when they hatch because they are too large, is this true? Also I don't have infusoria culture anymore, I kept it outside because of the smell and a rainstorm blew it away. I can grow more for future tads, but I figured that perhaps that culture would have begun to grow on the plants in the tadpole's cup since I put a few drops in there. If a newly hatched tad can eat brine shrimp I will begin to feed them to it

 

[Adfowner]

I wish my iPod camera were better but here are the little guys there are plenty of brine shrimp swimming around but you can't see those

 

[Adfowner]

Oh haha and the plastic cup is orange not the water!