Hello, from Minneapolis, MN

I'm hoping to get some axolotls soon, and I've been doing as much research here as I can (there's a ton of great information!). During college I had a 10 gallon tank where I raised a blue crayfish, but he died earlier this year in the middle of a molt I'm going to hopefully get a 20 gallon long aquarium and possibly put two axolotls (once they're big enough) in there, and use my 10 gallon to raise some feeder fish that would safe for the axolotls to eat. The toughest decision that I'm facing right now would be what to use as the substrate in the tank. I want to have a planted tank, but I don't want to use sand as it may be harder to clean, and I liked the idea of putting what looked like floor tile in the bottom (I saw this somewhere on this site). I guess I'll just have to do some more browsing and see what's best!

Welcome Jake! If you get a siphon hose, cleaning the sand won't end up being so difficult. I personally have large rocks at the bottom of my tank for now. Once I move back into my apartment for college I'm going to switch to sand. If you use the floor tiling methods it might be a little more difficult to get your plants to stay in the tank!

Hope some of this helps and I like the idea of you raising your own fish. Very smart.

Thanks for the tip :happy:. It seems like sand might be the ideal substrate for me.

Hi and welcome. Sand is a good substrate and not as hard to clean as you may think, i thought it would be hard, but it's actually really good, most waste settles on top of the sand, therefore easy enough to siphon up, and just to keep the sand clean give it a stir-up on a weekly clean. Tiled/slate bottom tank is also a good idea.