Hello Everyone

Hey guys,

My name is Bryanna and recently my boyfriend and I have been given the amazing opportunity to be the parents of our beautiful baby axolotl named Arie. (will become Arya if shes a girl) Since both of us are in college we have already had to move the little one a four hour distance away from school for the summer. My boyfriend had Arie for about a week and a half and we moved Arie from his home to mine so that I can take care of her while he is on his cruise. (I live an hour away so the drive was not too rough and we took every precaution) My only concern is that I have had problems with keeping the temperature of the water at a constant 64 degrees and had a huge freakout when it was at about 66 this morning when I woke up and Arie looked really upset.

She is currently upstairs in my room until I can convince my step dad to let me put her downstairs where it is consistently 68 in the house (he is working today so I will probably just move her) but for now I switch out Frozen bottles of water and test the ammonia levels every day. I am so worried that I am doing a bad job and I finally just had to post about this. I love Arie already and I just want to make sure I am doing everything right and especially show the wonderful woman I got Arie from that I can handle this.

So my problem is yes the temperature and also that Arie just seems a little inactive at different moments of the day (of course it is morning and they are nocturnal so she/he may be tired) but for the rest of the day she is very active

I feed her newt and salamander bites and occasionally blood worms and she seems to be growing at a consistent rate, she has a cave and a little plant (with no jagged edges or hard edges that would hurt her) Plus I just bought her another plant as well

Am I doing anything wrong? Any Advice?

(I have all the conditioners, drop test kit, and everything)

Great News! I moved her downstairs and she is a lot less stressed!

Could just be her personality that she's more active at different points in the day. My axie was really active when he was a baby but as he's gotten older he went through phases of being quite playful and swimming up to me when I approached the tank, to just looking around at me as if he was uninterested (unless I had food!). A few days ago I was moving stuff beside his tank and he swam right up and did the old 'play with me' thing he did as a baby where I would drag my finger along the side of the tank and he would chase it back and forward until one of us got bored!

The water temperature and the parameters are key to keeping your axie happy and stress free. Please make sure you are checking the PH level in the water and the nitrates and the nitrites in the water too, as well as the ammonia levels. Also, did you make sure the tank was properly cycled when you put Arie into it after moving her?

Sounds like you are doing fine though, just keep an eye on the temperature and parameters.

Axies are all different, some are active, some quiet (until it's dinner time), and you can't tell when they are asleep. So don't worry about activity or lack of it.

Temperature will become more of an issue as summer goes on, so if you have air con to keep the temp down that is ideal. A fan blowing across the surface is also a good idea, but you need to top up the water regularly.

How big is he/she? At about 3" you can start adding earthworm to their diet and gradually switch over.

Fireball, Thank you so much for the advice and help! Yes I have checked everything and the temperature is constant now so Arie is a lot better I check the ammonia levels and everything every day and do the regular water changes once a week (1/4 of the water)

Auntiejude,

Currently since I have moved Arie downstairs the temperature of the water is constant and I have not had to run the air conditioner because it is extremely cool downstairs naturally (I have also placed him/her in the coolest room in the house now) I think she is about 3 inches now, I will look into that. Thank you so much