New member from England

Hello
I am a new member from Hampshire England. I kept axolotls many years ago (over 50 years) and I am considering keeping some more as I have a large tank which I think will suit them fine. There are a few things I will want to explore before I make my mind up. I have looked through this excellent site and found the postings to be extremely well researched and interesting.

Welcome to the forum. It would be interesting to hear how husbandry techniques have changed over 50 years!

Hi Mark
There was very little information about keeping them then. I beleive I first saw them in the aquarium at the London Zoo and was fascinated by them and what it said about them on the tank. I did some research and was fascinated by their evolutionary history. I was at the time a schoolboy keen on science and later took a joint botany and zoology degree at university so they may have been partly responsible. When I purchase them I found an advert in Exchange and Mart and they were delivered to the local railway station in a tin the size of a 5l paint tin with an air inlet in the lid.They were melanistic wild types. I had seen albinos at the zoo but they were not generally available then. I kept them in a 3 ft tank with a very simple sponge filter worked by a bubbler. There was another bubbler in the tank. I cannot remember the substrate but it was probably ordinary sand. They were fed on earthworms, liver and strips of raw meat which I offered with tweezers as a rule. The worms I just dropped in and let them chase and find them. I dont remember changing the water that often but I think I did it with a jug after cleaning the glass with a sponge. I certainly did not treat the water in any way. By today's standards they might have been regarded as being mistreated in terms of water quality but they never showed any signs of distress. After university I moved around the country taking them with me in the back of my car in their tank with only enough water to cover them. I was a secondary school teacher and they lived along with many other animals in my laboratories for the children to be amazed by.
They lived about 14 years and were finally killed by a stupid 13 year old boy in my class who squirted a pipette full of phenolpthalein into the tank to see what would happen. That was the nearest I have ever come to commiting murder.