My long time vet advised seem to disagree with most people here

First , I live in NY city and there isn't many bait store around or place that sell worms for my axolotl so I had to ordered them online . I feed my axie California black worms, European Nightcrawler , and axolotl pellets. There's time when I was completely out of food supplies Cause the orders couldn't get here on times or the lace I usually ordered from are out of worms, so I had to feed the frozen shrimp to buy times. My vet recommending me the cut up raw beef heart and show me how to prepare it . It's a pain to prepare and so I hardly considered doing unless I my store are out of frozen shrimp. But when I mention that I fed frozen beef heart to my axie , I became he worst person ever live . I have the same vet for 10 years and he was the person that I adopted my first axie ( she came with a gold fish and no don't keep them together ) . My vet knew about this site , and he just laugh when I let him read all the commends I've got about my terrible advice I gave on here base on his recomendations I'm not sure who I should believe at this point. Sometime I want to believe what people here have to say about it but I also known my vet for very long time and he's good vet . He usually came by as a house call to all my axie all these years and never charge me extra for it .. I'm stump . I don't know what to do.

The main reason beef heart is a bad choice is it's low level of minerals, especially calcium, which is needed for healthy bone growth etc. Along with bone growth calcium is vital for other day to day bodily functions and if it's not available in sufficient quantitys, the animals metabolism will will begin to break down the skeleton to obtain it that way.
Ideally, foods for Axolotls should have a calcium to phosphorous ratio of 2:1, beef heart falls way short on this as well. With terrestrial animals it's easy to correct this ratio by adding a good quality calcium/multivitamin supplement like Repcal or Nutrabal, but this is obviously not possible for aquatic herps like Axies.

It's true that many of the old books and even scientific papers from the 1970's and 80's recommended beef heart as a staple diet, but things have come a long way since then and our husbandry methods have moved on and improved.
I know there'll be keepers that still feed their Axies mammal flesh today and they'll eat it, but when there are pelllets available that are nutritionally perfect there's just no need.
I'm not a vet though, I fix cars and trucks for a living so maybe I'm missing something, maybe your vet could educate us and explain how a carnivorous amphibian that sees almost no sunlight in its natural environment can grow and develop normally on a diet that's less than 5% minerals with a calcium to phosphorous ratio of 1:20?

Thank you you're awesome! :happy: My vet does seems like an old school type vet ( very old school) . I learn a lot from him but also I'm trying to learn new stuff that's why I'm here. His assistance ordered me some German axolotl pellets and I have been using it every since when my worms running low and my axie seems to enjoy it ( even more than worms) . It's seems that my vet's ideal of calcium and mineral came from the sea shell and mineral balls that he had me added in all my old filters do to my soft water problem that increasingly happening do to the city changed new pipes around here. But I'm not sure adding is the same as eating .

Adding minerals to soft water is good advice, if it falls below an axolotls requirements but im doubtful that there would be much difference made with a few mineral balls in an aquarium with regular high vol water changes.

Some Koi keepers do use Oyster shells in their filter to combat soft water, but they need an entire chamber full of tens of thousands of them to make any difference at all. As Ian says, one or two in a filter won't do much of anything.
Replacing Calcium in the diet with a few shells in the filter is just plain silly.

It's hard to argue with my own vet but I'll try to talk to him to see what he'll say about it . All my axie doesn't have much of any health issue but he still visit regularly because of the water quality change in our area. He comes to do all the water testing once a week.

He sounds like a nice man, and I don't doubt he's a good old school vet generally, I just don't know why he can't see the issue with beef. As I've already said, there have been papers written in the past about the care of laboratory Axolotls that suggest beef heart as a staple and maybe those animals lived long enough to serve their purpose in the lab, so maybe he's thinking of those. It doesn't sound like he'll be swayed, but you could still feed your Axies sinking Salmon pellets or whatever, just keep it to yourself.

Chinadog
"adding a good quality calcium/multivitamin supplement like Repcal or Nutrabal, but this is obviously not possible for aquatic herps like Axies"

This is possible, and in a very simple way. Make a paste of oatmeal or something like that and add to it what you want. Enter this to your crickets and after an hour or two you give them to your Axo's. Do remove the large hind legs or they will spit them out again. Use tweezers or other tools, in order to present the cricket under water. If your food is varied, it is better to give no extras. This may do more harm than good.

Gr. RG

I see what you mean, gut loading is a good way of making up for what the crickets are lacking, but I really meant in relation to the beef heart. I suppose if you were determined to feed the beef you could find a way of getting of getting the supplement into it, but my overall point is why bother going to all the trouble and mess when you can easily buy amphibian pellets that are a complete staple diet?

Point taken, but what does that have to do with beef heart?

Chinadog said:

He sounds like a nice man, and I don't doubt he's a good old school vet generally, I just don't know why he can't see the issue with beef. As I've already said, there have been papers written in the past about the care of laboratory Axolotls that suggest beef heart as a staple and maybe those animals lived long enough to serve their purpose in the lab, so maybe he's thinking of those. It doesn't sound like he'll be swayed, but you could still feed your Axies sinking Salmon pellets or whatever, just keep it to yourself.

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He is very sweet and scary stubborn? , beef heart would be only my last resort between the time that I couldn't get worms any othe live food or pellets ( my axie for some reason won't eat frozen worms ) I don't think my vet try to get me to feed beef heart as stable food but more like a last emergency option so my axie won't go hungry till their next batch of worms arrive. ( or tasty treats)