I've visited this site frequently for my 3-week intensive course on Axolotl care (Thanks-- very helpful!), and joined mainly so I could offer my perspective and insights from a region where Axolotls were not meant to be pets-- Texas, where we're enjoying daily 101F/38C summer temperatures.
It started as a search for newts at the local pet stores (where I found two Peninsula newts), but at another one I saw the first and only Axolotls I'd ever seen. They had two, and I had to have one even though I knew nothing about its care. Within a week I had bought both... and then over the next couple of weeks I bought a couple new tanks (since a divided tank doesn't work well for separate temperatures), a canister filter, and a chiller (since the bags of ice cubes and frozen bottle were getting very tiresome and didn't chill well enough)... If I'd known these guys were going to claim so much of my paycheck, I probably wouldn't have bought them! (And I now understand why I'd never seen any in pet stores.) However, since I bought them, the only humane thing to do was to give them the cool temperatures that they required... while we humans suffered with our air-conditioner thermostats turned up to save on the electric bill, LOL.
I just wish they looked more appreciative...
It started as a search for newts at the local pet stores (where I found two Peninsula newts), but at another one I saw the first and only Axolotls I'd ever seen. They had two, and I had to have one even though I knew nothing about its care. Within a week I had bought both... and then over the next couple of weeks I bought a couple new tanks (since a divided tank doesn't work well for separate temperatures), a canister filter, and a chiller (since the bags of ice cubes and frozen bottle were getting very tiresome and didn't chill well enough)... If I'd known these guys were going to claim so much of my paycheck, I probably wouldn't have bought them! (And I now understand why I'd never seen any in pet stores.) However, since I bought them, the only humane thing to do was to give them the cool temperatures that they required... while we humans suffered with our air-conditioner thermostats turned up to save on the electric bill, LOL.
I just wish they looked more appreciative...