Young Axies and Diet - Earthworms Regurgitated

I have two young axolotls (2 months old - 3 inches long) and they were eating live blackworms during their time with the breeder. I don't have access to blackworms in my area, but I did purchase live, young nightcrawlers. While my axies happily eat frozen bloodworms, they have regurgitated the live nightcrawlers. I've blanched and cooled them, cut them into smaller and smaller pieces, and wiggled them about. They grab the nightcrawler segment every time and every time, they spit it up. Are they too small/young for these relatively large worms? Segments are never as large as their head.

Do I continue to try or do some axies reject live worms?

I am also having similar issues. My axis.. not sure how old they were exactly when I got them from my breeder. They were about 3 inches, I'd say about almost 4 inches now, they were trained on granules and did well on those but I wanted to give them a better diet and read on here that earth worms provide a way better diet and nutritional basis for them so I picked some up.

Wal-Mart's bait section only had Canadian and European night crawlers. I looked on here again and majority of the people said Canadian earthworms were better and their axis responded better with them then the European kind.

I did similar as O.P. blanched then cooled then chopped one worm into small pieces to split with both my axolotls. They ate it first day but not much. A little less than half a worm each. But the next day I tried and they took one piece. My wild type ate it then spit it out. I think the piece was too big so I tried a smaller piece and she ate it but my leucistic wasn't having it. The piece I gave him was tiny but he just kept playing with it, meaning trying to chew but it was going in and out of his mouth. After he finally ate it I tried to feed him another piece and he refused. He came up to it with his nose but after a few seconds just walked away like it was nothing. I just took it as they weren't hungry.

I know they are too small for feeder fish.. maybe it's the same for the worms I'm not too sure though. May I ask what type of night crawlers you are trying? Also has anyone else experienced this?

I swapped my axolotl to hikari sinking carnivore pellets at around 4 inches after having him on black worms, which was the diet at the LFS. He ate the pellets readily while I found some worms and tried the red wrigglers with little luck, ate them in small amounts and regurgitated them if he ate more than 1 or 2, not enough to keep his weight up and he started losing weight, so back to the pellets.

I got some Canadian Night crawlers not long ago, about the same size as his. He hadn't eaten pellets in a day and ate the first night crawler after a bit of a struggle (ended up being bigger). Every day after that he refused the worm, sometimes doing what yours does until eventually by the 3rd day he would just walk away from me when I put the worm in front of him. I decided to give him a nice break and try the worms again later.

Canadian night crawlers seem to be the easiest accepted, so I think you're good there. I don't like the idea of not feeding them until they take the food, as my axolotl was an obvious sign of not taking it at all to the point of losing weight. I would say to try feeding the food that they're used to, or whatever food they will eat readily for a few days and try again with the worms in small pieces.

I'm not sure if I would recommend the feeder fish. You would need a whole separate tank to quarantine or breed the feeder fish, and I've read that some axolotls don't hunt the fish down. Some feeder fish can be quite fast and avoid being eaten as well, from what I've read.

I believe pellets to be a decent alternative for an axolotl that won't eat live food, but I am no expert. I have only owned 1 axolotl who I've had for a few months since he was 2.5 inches to now at 8 inches. He seems quite happy and is nice and chubby. I'm not sure how good the Hikari sinking carnivore pellets are, so I will be trying the salmon pellets from Ed's Fly meat soon since my stock is running low, and I believe those are the ones the axolotl colony uses. I think they are definitely worth it if you would try to try to get your axolotl on pellets and would rather get something locally.