Question: My Axi is weird

I've had my axolotl, Bear, for about 2 months and he's always seemed like a pretty happy little guy. The thing is, ever since I moved to University, he's been acting different. BAck home in Colorado, he was really lazy and barely moved all day. Whereas here he's constantly zipping around his tank and playing in his plants and such. At first I was concerned that he was stressed because I had to start his tank cycle all over with him in it (I wasn't going to leave him in the travel container for the time it took to cycle.) but he just kept doing it. I've had to reset the cycle again a few days ago because his older filter broke and I had to buy a bigger one (The shop was out of the size he originally had, otherwise I'd have used the same filter media from the old filter.)

I've read in a bunch of places that this is kinda unusual for them to swim all over their tanks and such like this. He also likes to butt his nose gently into the side of the tank. (I have a silicone anemone decoration that sticks to the side of the tank and he loves rolling around in it, then goes higher up and bumps into the glass, flaring his gills out as he does. I've made sue he's not trying to eat the anemone decorations, and nope! He just plays in them before swimming off again.

He lives in a 20 long tank on his own with a 5-step on the back filter (I plan on getting something to buffer to current, but it's pushed way far against the side of the tank and he just tends not to go to that side of it and seems happy enough with that. I do weekly water changes as well.

So I think he's just weird?

Thats so cute!
The thing is though you don't want to keep them in an uncycled tank, it could potentially kill him, and this is because of the ammonia, and every cycle goes through a large ammonia spike, best thing you can do is take him out and put him in a large tub with a lid (lid needs holes) and use spring water, and do 100% water changes everyday. Otherwise you have to do water changes everyday in the uncycled tank to keep the ammonia down.
Hope all goes well.

Bear certainly is funny!

The tank filter has an ammonia sponge that keeps levels down, I do water parameter checks about every other day and they stay basically within the healthy ranges. So I don't believe ammonia is a huge concern for me? I could be wrong though, I always treat water before I put it in my tank, but I've been told by many people that the tap water here in NE is basically the perfect pH as long as it's dechlorinated and such.

Alright!
Sounds good, just wanted to make sure that your axolotl is all good!
If the levels get to high, you know what to do, haha.
Hope to hear more about Bear in the future!

Of course! I plan on putting up more about him because I love sharing cute stories about my odd little friend. :lol: