I'm new- help me figure out what to feed my axolotls

I'm sure you get questions like this all the time, so sorry :<

I have two youngish adult axolotls, bought off craigslist.

The guy who sold them recommended feeding them frozen popcorn shrimp in pieces or earthworms. I find the shrimp kinda icky and also heard earthworms are the way to go, so I've been feeding them that.

BUT. A few days ago I moved into college, in Iowa. And while Wisconsin (where I'm from) has a ton of lakes and therefore earthworms are sold year round, I'm not sure if I'll be able to get worms in the winter here. (Back home ice fishing is really popular, and here there is only small rivers)

There's also a DNR fish hatchery in town that raises trout, I read that trout pellets can be fed to axolotls, so I have been considering calling them and asking them if they would sell me any. I feel kinda weird about doing that though.

Ideally I'd like to keep feeding them worms or get pellets... is there any kind of commercial food available online? And what are your thoughts? Thank you :happy:

You can get pellets from AGSC (Ambystoma Genetic Stock Center) that they seem to take to very well. I just got my axolotl too, but those pellets are what his parents eat and he's doing great on them so far.

Pellets are fine for times when you can't get earthworms. Worms have the best nutritional value.
You can also use frozen bloodworms, or chunks of beef heart as occasional treats, but I think these are quite fatty. I sometimes use meal worms, but you have to decapitate them, as they have little pincers on their head.
I think the axolotl pellets I use are just salmon pellets, you could probably find them easily online.

Iv recently got my 3 axolotl too, and I generally feed as big a variety as possible. They love frozen bloodworm and earthworms, although I do feed pellets and tadpoles for a bit of variety They do like live food, but frozen is taken just as well!!

check out walmart, they sell canadian nightcrawlers there.

Or read the axolotl site, and learn everything you need to know.

Mine love the pellets and don't seem to care for worms of any kind.

Or you could start your own worm farm, just get on ebay and buy some Red Wigglers, and get two stacking stirofome coolers. put them in each other, put small holes in the bottem of the top one so that worm juice can come out. then fill it up with news paper cardbored and food scraps, it should be the consistency of a damp spounge. then throw some worms in it! they eat about 1/2 their weight a day and your pop will dubble in 90days

Sorry about the spelling errors im still waking up.

Most of the people on here simply feed their axi's earthworms. Including myself!

They are easy to feed because they wriggle and thereby allow the axi's to find them and thereby are also enrichment as they are live food and they have to hunt.

You can also vary it by feeding bloodworm, mussel, lean meats, pellets, etc..

Hope it helps! PM me if you have questions!

I feed my axolotl frozen brine shrimp, frozen bloodworms and live blackworms here and there

There was just an ad posted in the for-sale area of this forum for pellets. They are the same pellets that the AGSC sells (Rangen moist salmon pellets), and are better than trout pellets. In my experience, trout pellets are kind of oily and hard.