Not Eating !!

Hello, Im new to this site. Im from Perth Australia. I have a new axolotl and I am having a feeding problem. The first day I had him he ate a small portion of the frozen food that the shop gave me but that made too much of a mess and dirtied the water so we attempted to revert to the pallets. it has now been 5 days and I cant get him to eat a thing, no matter how long we hold the food in front of him there is absolutely no interest. How long will he survive without food and what can I do???

The shop also told me that i wont need a filter and that a water change every 4 weeks is adequate, but that contradicts the info that ive read off this site. Im confused. I purchased him as a gift for my sons christmas present but now im wondering if he will survive to the 25th if he isnt eating!


Thanks

Pet shops often give terrible advice and it sounds like you have been given some unfortunately. I would recommend you check out axolotl.org as that gives a lot of help with setting up a tank for an axolotl. Here are some things to look for:

-Did you cycle your tank beforehand? If not, you will need to monitor the water carefully over the next 3-10 weeks until the tank is cycled. You can do this by buying test kits for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate from aquariums/pet stores. Whenever the ammonia or nitrite starts to read over 0, you need to do 20% water changes daily until the ammonia goes back to 0. The process is a bit complicated to explain in a post so here is an article on it: http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/cyclingEDK.shtml. Cycled tank readings will be ammonia + nitrite=0, nitrate=10-40

-Measure your PH, it should be between 6.5-8.

-Did you dechlorinate the water before putting in your axie? If not, that can make it sick as well. You can by water dechlorinator from the pet store and put some in the water before putting your axie in.

-Temperature should be between 14-18C ideally, and anything over 24C will stress out your axie.

-Ok now to water changes. If you do not have a filter you need to change 20% of your water *every day* so the pet store is totally wrong in that regard. With a filter, once your tank is cycled, you can do 20% water changes each week. I would recommend buying a filter. How big is your tank? Get a filter to match the size of your tank. Without a filter, changing each month, I would be surprised your axie would make it til the end of the first month

-With feeding, what is the frozen food you have been giving to your axie? I suspect your axolotl is probably quite stressed as it sounds like the pet store did not give you proper advice on how to look after them and that is probably why it is not eating. You can feed axolotls many things and some nutritional suggestions are probably live earth worms (though make sure not to get any that have been exposed to any chemicals), blood worms and brine shrimp (you can get these frozen too) and soft salmon pellets.

-What substrate are you using? If it is gravel, remove it asap and use something else like sand (that has been washed first) or a bare tank floor.

Hi I'm in Perth too. When we started feeding our axie pellets we had to drop them right over or just in front of his head and he would snap at them. Now he'll take them like that, but also pick them up off the floor (he has a flat dish we drop them onto that makes it easier to clean up any he doesn't eat). It took a couple of weeks before he'd eat them off the floor. They snap in response to movement near their heads. Earthworms I've also found are good as they move.
On a different subject, we are about to have some very hot weather, if you're new to axies might be worthwhile reading about cooling on this site and having some frozen water bottles on hand and a thermometer in his tank.
Five days is not long to go without food for an axie and sometimes they don't eat for a while while they settle in.
Good luck and Merry stinking-hot Christmas!!

Hi Scotto and welcome to the forum.

Only two of our axolotls have eaten pellets, when they were under a year old. None of our axolotls will touch them now, but we pretty much feed them earthworms, slaters (woodlice), garden snails (break the shells) and garden slugs.

While you are monitoring your tankwater parameters (testing for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate); don't be tempted to add any chemicals that will fix up things in the tankwater (as advised by petshops etc....) the waterchanges will sort things out.

pH isn't as important as the first three while cycling and shouldn't be adjusted by things like pH up or down. If you have a problem with pH levels after your tank has cycled ie: - lower than 6.4 or higher than 8.0; then shellgrit in a stocking/pantyhose and placed in your tank will raise the pH levels - peatmoss will lower pH.

Also, just in case if you think your axolotl is ailing/sick at all don't add any medicines as most fish medicines are toxic to an axolotl.

My white axolotl hasn't eaten for one and a half weeks now. The water temperature is fine, and my yellow axolotl in the same tank is fine as well. The white one just stopped eating all of a sudden and has lost a lot of weight. It behaves in a calm manner, and doesn't eat food even if I hold it infront of its mouth.

Help please.

This can happen and is not unusual.

Your tank temperature may be ok, and your other may appear fine, but have you tested your tankwater for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates?

It would help if you added your location/nationality to give people an idea of where you are so they can aid you more in your requests.

Have you added anything recently to the tank and what do you feed them?

Hi,
I just wanted to let you know that my axolotl went nearly 9 weeks without food and survived. I just tried him on everything, and every day I offered him something to eat until he eventually just started eating again (I ended up cutting up meal worms that I got from the fridge at the local pet shop, squeezing their guts out and waving it under his nose!) Boy did I party when he took that first one!!!! Going 9 weeks is not a usual thing with out food for an axie I'm sure, but I just thought that it might stop you worrying so much about the "not eating for a few days" thing!

I have set up a worm farm for my axol. He loves worms out of the garden but he wont eat them out of my worm farm??? They are the same size, Does anyone know why this is?

Do the worms wiggle? the wrigglier the better for mine.... are you washing them before you put them in.. we tend to get the days feed out of the farm then put them into a bowl of water then feed after they have had a good bath...
it may also depend on what you fed the worms, the axies may not like the smell of something the worms were wriggling in..

It could be the type of worm. Tiger worms which are generally used in compost heaps/worm farms can have an unpleasant taste for some axies compared to the normal garden worm.