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My Axolotl set up (any advice?)

Robroy

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These pics were taken during feeding time so please excuse the crumbled pellets.

That brings me to my first question.
What kind of pellets do you guys/gals feed with? Mine seem to disolve and turn into mush very quick.

has anyone experimented with planted tanks with axolotls?

I was thinking of doing a Amano themed tank, but just one side so the axolotls will have a "dark side when the lights are on.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=4498047&l=60f3c36aa7&id=695819351
 

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Robroy

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Forgot to mention.
The tank is a 135gal (6'x 18" x 22") with a sandpipe box overflow.
I keep about 10" of water in the tank that the axolotls live in so about 60 gal of display.
The tank runs into a 120 gal sump tank making it a total of 170-180 depending on the level the sump is at. The water is first filtered with a bag before going into the resevoir where it is filtered by a massive hang on tank filter and than a pond filter box with mechanical filtration screens in it. The tank is kept at65-68 f. There is a spray bar that runs the 6' length of the tank and is set to trickle out every two inches so there is very little to no current despite the 500 gph pump. makes a bit of a waterfall noise, but the axies seem to love it. The lights are set to 12h on 12h off and as or right now only consist of 1 30" power compact light in the center of the tank.

I figured the setup might be a bit of an overkill, but they are my babies and they should be spoiled. I plan to raise the water another 2-4" slowly so they can adjust.

Any advice on bettering my tank for my axies would be helpfull.

Thank you in advance,
Rob
 

Robroy

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I'm going to do an Amano themed tank. the center is going to stay normal sand and the two back corners are going to be built up to about 5-6" with black sand plant substrate. it is going to slope down around the middle and to the front creating a crater for the statue and ruins. I'm going to make it look like the ruined side of an old castle/ church. My girlfriend is going to buy me 8 bags of the substrate for my birthday that is coming up.

As for the plants I was planning on getting baby tears for a "ground covering" and some Java fern for the back of the tank to cover the back glass. Before any of that goes in I have to find a retrofit kit for my old JBJ fixture. Its set up for PC lights now, but it is hard to find parts for it so I was going to swap out the ballast and lights for some of the T5 lights. The fixture itself is kind of a pendant style canopy if that makes any sense. It houses 4 pc bulbs, but is on aircraft cables that allow you to adjust it high or low depending on how far you want the light to spread before it hits the water.

Than of course if I go with baby tears I should get a C02 diffuser system also.

Its a work in progress limited by my budget of course. lol Next week I plan on getting the lights ordered as I tapped myself out of spending money picking up some new axolotls for my tank this week. The diffuser can wait until after the plants have been seeded as I think the axolotls will be able to keep a small amount of plants thriving until they take off.

I will post pics as the tank develops.

Ultimate goal= the most spoiled axolotls EVAR!
 

Nathan050793

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It might also be worth mentioning that axolotls are also slightly prone to uprooting live plants as they trundle along doing their thing, so it might be worth making sure any live plants are well-secured.
 

ted22

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Lookin good, your gonna be needing at least 1 hide per axolotl, (at least big enough to fit your axies whole body) either a cave, hollow log ormanment or plantpots sort of thing! Also what is the statue and bricks made of? tis just alot of stone are not suitable for aqauriums as can leech nasties into the water and as your axies skin is porous it can be really harmful (things like sandstone for example) but youve probably done your research before hand to find out tho. also like the others said deep sand is dangerous, only should have bout an inch!

Oooh any other suggestions....... yeah man plants! axies love rummaging through plants but they do have a habit of destroying them so you might need to replace a few evey now and then and just be sure to pick out the broken or damaged parts before they rot and foul the water (I now just have plastic plants as the real ones just became a nightmare!)

Few tips for spoiling axies, maintaining high water quality, loads of caves, things to climb, an air con unit, getting the lighting right, providing alot of shade, nice juicy worms, a few toys to play with (sunken ping pong balls, budgie hoops), and live food! Ive spoilt my little guy rotten!
 

Robroy

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My reason of using the flourite sand over the gravel was that I do not want the axolotls eating the gravel. I will have to do a little research to see how deep of substrate the dwarf baby tears ( Hemianthus callichtroides) need. To solve the air pocket problem with the deep sand in the back I may just do an even substrate across the whole tank for the baby tears to grow in and get some malasian drift wood for the whole back of the tank for the java fern to root in. This would also provide many caves for the axolotls. I will have to play it by ear with the digging habbits of the axolotls. If they insist on constantly digging up the baby tears than I will stick with just driftwood rooting plants and set up a seperate amano tank. For the time being Im going to add some 2 1/2" PVC pipe to the tank for temporary caves.

Next time I go to the store I am deffinatly going to pick up some ping pong balls. This i gotta see.

I ordered two whole beef hearts from the butcher and im in the process of ordering some pellets recomended by another caudata.org user to solve my desolving food problem. I also started a dwarf platie/ snail breeding tank for treats. I picked up half a dozen marbled crayfish (aka cloning crays) to breed for food. I do give them worms about once a week.

I am going to keep a close eye on the water hardness to make sure the stone isn't leeching anything harsh. I also do very frequient water changes. I have a 50gal drum in the fish room behind the tank and every week I drain about 50gal from the sump tank and replace it with the aged water from the drum.

I am in high debate about picking up one of the new fluval g6 canister filters with the LCD sceen that keeps a 6 month record of water conditions including Electrical Conductivity. Fluval G-Series - The next generation in aquatic filters

Well I'm off to do one of the above mentioned water changes and add some caves. I will post some updated pics in a bit.

Thanks for all the advice,
Rob
 

Robroy

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I took your advice Ted and added some more caves. I took a large piece of malasian drift wood and drilled a bunch of 1/2" and 1/4" hols through it and took some java fern starters from another tank and fed it into the holes. Now when they take root the roots will grow out the bottom of the drift wood creating a bogroot cave for the axies to play in. There is no way the axolotls are going to be able to uproot that. ;) I also added a few slate caves spread out that cast great shade. on the other side of the tank there is an entire cave system made up of 3 pieces of driftwood with slate on it to block out the light. Eventually I will add plants to that driftwood and remove the slate. I was thinking of anubus (spelling?) for that side.

To solve the ground covering being uprooted issue I was thinking of putting an inch layer of sand with a plastic grid layer over it. The kind you can get at the craft store for making the yarn cross stitch things. over that layer another 1/2"-1" of sand. That way when the baby tears take root they will grow into the mesh. I can do this in grids as the baby tears spread.

Here are some pics of the axolotls inspecting their new stuff. Spot, headed straight for the java fern. Thanks again Kimko for letting me adopt him and his friends. :D

I decided against the PVC because It was to small, but I will pick some larger stuff up next time im at the depot. I'm going to get the ping pong balls later today.
 

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Robroy

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Starting to get my axolotls home how I want it. I don't know why the two pics came out so blury. I will try to get some better ones soon. The sand has been replaced by flourite sand and all of the plants added are real. I have built extensive cave systems out of malasian driftwood and non jagged slate. My axolotls really do love playing in the plants and the red mellon sword is one of their fav hide spots, so I plan on picking up two more large ones for the other side of the tank. I have also noticed that I seem to have a worm infestation. They are making what I can only discribe as featherduster tubes all over everything. I have seen some lingering blackworms in the tank from 6 months ago when my axolotls were small. Do blackworms make tubes? They have to be breeding because there are tons of them. Has anyone else experienced this?

I was thinking of getting some Otocinclus to clean the algea off the rocks, plants and glass, but I have to make sure they would be okay in cool temp. Anyone have any experience with them in a cool water tank?
 

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