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Question: Axolotls throwing up worms

LunaandArte

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Hello fellow axie carers! For the last month or so both axolotls have thrown up within half an hour of feeding when I’ve fed them earth worms. They’ve always been fed a diet of earth worms, bloodworms & pellets, they’re roughly 2.5 years old.

I have a few ideas as to why this might be happening:

1 - Where we’ve got the worms from. Used to by worms from our towns fishing shop, then it closed. We’ve used other relatively local fishing shops since. Starting to think theres a difference between quality of worms sold for bait? Perhaps these other shops have a different supplier? Idk.

2 - Theres a weird territorial/power thing going on between the two of them.As they’ve got older our two male bois seem to not be getting along as well, nibbling each other n such. They sometimes look as if they’re stalking eachother round the tank & theres been a few occasions where one of them has gotten stressed and suddenly swam everywhere knocking things in panic - possibly to do with their relationship, sometimes it seems unprovoked. I imagine if they did this when I wasn’t looking after eating it could make them sick?

3 - We’ve changed the type of pellets we feed them. Our bois love ‘axolotl sticks’, much more than the previous pellets we gave them. Maybe these have more nutrition in them & they don’t need to be fed as often? Could be sick due to overfeeding?

4 - Water quality?
Haven’t done a thorough water check recently, have done a water change tonight and plan to do a propper check tomorrow (need more tests). This might explain why they’re being particularly stressy with eachother atm plus one of the two is very hard to feed at all atm, I’ve read that water quality can put them off food?

Would really appreciate your thoughts, experiences & other ideas! Not too worried atm but will be if they keep struggling to eat like this.
 

Hayleyy

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Check the water parameters, there is possibly something happening there. The worms may be different between suppliers, see if you can find another source of worms to test that. How big is your tank, and how many hides do you have? If they don't seem to be getting along maybe they need a tank upgrade?
 

LunaandArte

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Thank you for your responce! Read a while back & felt I should post a responce now things have sorted themselves out incase anyone else has a similar problem.

SO the water parameters were actually fine, everything at ideal levels give or take nitrite which was slightly more than it should have been.

We tried another supplier of worms and Arte ate those happily with no problems however Luna was still having troubles with them. She ate maybe half a worm a week for a couple if weeks and kept spitting anything more or bigger out.

I forget the exact tank size but I know we went closer to the minimum requirement size wise for the two of them, we agree that they could really do with a longer tank so they can feel like they’ve got more space. As soon as we’ve got through selling our house (which is sadly taking longer than we thought :mad: ) we do plan to get a bigger setup.

For now, what resolved the problem was feeding luna cut up prawn. I forgot we used to feed them store bought prawns when they were younger and they did like them a lot. Felt it would work as luna kinda looked as if she was struggling due to how determined our worms are to get away and it did!
 

Kingfisher

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Do you know what type of worms you are getting?

Red wrigglers excrete a protective slime when they are threatened. I read some axolotls don't like the taste and some don't mind it. Mine didn't like the taste and would spit them out. I had to do a quick blanching of the cut worms in hot tap water and rinsed them in cold before feeding them. Night crawlers don't produce the foul slime.

I feel your pain of the temporary smaller tank. I was moving as well to a new house a few months ago and didn't want to and had no room to set up a large tank for my two guys in my existing place. They were fine in smaller tank. I just made sure I feed them well and did many water changes.
 
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