Cohabiting

Hi,

I am new here, around a month ago I finally got axolotls, I have wanted some for a long time but until recently only had the space for one large tank which I let the fish have.

So my two are currently living in a Fluval Roma 125, this is 80 cm long by 35 deep, they are currently separated by a mesh divider which allows the water to flow between the sections and they can see each other, so they have around 40cm of tank each. They are both a similar size, although one is slightly larger than the other. The larger is a melanoid and the other a leucistic and they are around 12-13cm in length.

I would like to give them some time without the divider, being young they are fairly active so the extra space i think would be good. My worry is Are they too small to try this still and is there any behaviour to watch out for before things would result in a possible injury? Also should I feed daily to begin with to ensure they are not getting hungry and separate again for feeding, I am currently feeding everywhere day as I think I was over feeding to begin with and the pair got huge stomachs.

They have been together for a short period of time, I topped up the tank and one made it over the divide, not sure they even went near each other however she couldn't have been over for very long at all.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Gillian

They should be fine at that size. They should be fed daily at that size anyway, but hungry axies are more likely to nip than sated ones.

As long as they're about the same size you can keep them together. Just make sure they have enough hides and get enough to eat to avoid them biting each other. When you first take the divider out it's good to keep a close eye on them incase one of them starts biting for some reason. When they're still growing it's good to feed them every day - they put pretty much all the energy to growing, I've never seen a fat juvenile.

Thank you for the response, I will go back to daily feeding (I only stopped at the end of last week) and then try them together over the weekend, they have 2 hides each currently so hopefully enough

That all sounds fine I didn't divide my first two when I got them, but I did divide between my old two and the two I got recently because there was a bit of a size difference. When I woke up in the morning they had all switched places and swam over the divider >.<