Is my baby axolotl skinny?

Hey again all! Back with another question. My little Coa has grown some in the week that I've had him. He's gotten longer and more adventurous. He even crept up to me for food the other day and he usually hides! I'm just a worry wart though and want to make sure he's not too skinny. I just don't know!
He was in the mail for four days and was rail thin when I got him. He would only eat a bloodworm at a time. Now I give him a half a cube and he vacuums it right up! He's also grown enough in the past week that I was able to give him some very tiny segments of earthworm. (last week he couldn't get his mouth around them) he still had to work pretty hard to get them down at first but he's getting better.

Now for pictures! Is he a good size?!

Your baby doesn't look thin, a good rule is that you want the width across the thickest part of their body to be the same or close to the width of their head. Try to feed less and less blood worms, and increasingly more earthworm.

Krispy said:

Your baby doesn't look thin, a good rule is that you want the width across the thickest part of their body to be the same or close to the width of their head. Try to feed less and less blood worms, and increasingly more earthworm.

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That's what I've started trying to do. I don't think he likes the earthworms...I have to dice the poor things into bite sized pieces and sometimes even half that to get him to swallow them. He spits them back out. And even when I do get him to eat some, he'll eat about two shreds and then start refusing. As soon as I break out the bloodworm cube he's suddenly 'hungry' and hoovers it all up.

My axie did the same thing. He would just refuse the cut up worm, yet eat bloodworms like there's no tomorrow. I ended up just feeding him bloodworms until he was big enough for red wrigglers, and grew him out on those until he was big enough for night crawlers. Bloodworms aren't the worst thing in the world for them, but I only give them as a treat every now and then (like I haven't given him any in months, I feed them so sparingly).

Foxypaws said:

That's what I've started trying to do. I don't think he likes the earthworms...I have to dice the poor things into bite sized pieces and sometimes even half that to get him to swallow them. He spits them back out. And even when I do get him to eat some, he'll eat about two shreds and then start refusing. As soon as I break out the bloodworm cube he's suddenly 'hungry' and hoovers it all up.

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I've been thru the same thing. From my experience, if you keep insisting on the earthworms, they will catch on. Give it some more time

What kind of earthworms are you trying? Red wrigglers where I live are naaaasty, my axolotls have always refused them even when they were blanched. Nightcrawlers on the other hand are great!

I started with chopped up nightcrawlers from a bait shop. He spit those out. I ended up prying a bunch of smaller worms from my garden the other day (definitely no pesticides there!) and he chomped right down. I set up a compost bin to see if they'll breed, or at least keep. They're a lot smaller and skinnier than the worms that I got from the bait shop and he'll slurp up 4 or 5 of them before stopping.

He sees me coming now and presses his little face against the glass in anticipation.

Some of them are still so long that they need to be chopped up though and that's where the interesting bit comes in here...he'll eat happily until I offer him the 'butt' end of the worm. The thick/fat tail part. He'll bite it, chew it, but ultimately it's always discarded like it's nasty. This is the same thing he did with the big nightcrawlers. I wonder if they're too thick and chewy for his taste?

Yeah they may be a little too chunky at the moment. Google what worm species are near you so you can ID them. You might be able to buy a box of them to start a worm farm! Or if you can dig up enough you can start one that way