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Question: Spoilt little axolotl at feeding time!

Ronni

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So I have a juvenile axolotl who's been with us for a week and a half now, I call it a her (although I won't actually know fora long while!) and her name is lottie. When I got her from the pet shop they told me that they were 8 weeks old and she was about 2 - 2.5 inches long and due to their size they were being tweezer fed TWICE a WEEK most successfully on blood worms and being moved to a container to eat to minimise mess.

This is where the spoiling and the trickiness comes in... Due to said tweezers feeding in separate containers Lottie will absolutely NOT eat in her tank. At all. I can basically almost shoved the food up her nose and she will show no interest at all! But as soon as she hits the water in her feeding bowl she is gills up and ready for dinner! Which is great in theory as it leaves no mess for me to clean up in the tank but it also means that now I have upped her feeds to twice a day as it should be I now have to net and move her each time which doesn't seem to stress her apart from the few seconds trying to catch her and dropping her into her dinner bowl and she realises what deliciousness comes next! So as it stands, she eats 1 cube of bloodworms or brine shrimp 2 times per day, with about a quarter or so lost to wastage because she refuses to eat anything you have dropped and picked up again! See, spoilt! ��

My question is - how long can we keep this up?? And does anyone have any tips to interest her inside her own tank?? I'm quite happy to keep this up (especially while she's eating frozen - thawed brine Shrimp and bloodworms) but once she shows interest in earthworms and such I'd like to get her to eat them in her tank for convenience and to not upset her too much.

I just wanted to add that since I've had her she has almost doubled in size! In just over a week! Sounds odd to me?? Especially as her tank mates still living at the pet store haven't changed much at all.
 
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tipnatee

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I was curious about what did you mean earlier that they fed them twice a week? :mad: I mean as the growing babies they eat so much and grow so fast , maybe the pet store owner try to control their growth? It's sounding almost impossible cause that would be starving them and possibly can only be done with extreme cold temperature, separated each one ( maybe raising them in the cup ) cause if not they would have already ate each other by then. If that's so her tank mate would be so much smaller than yours by now. And yes I know quite abit about the spoiling axolotl . If they never raise to hunt , that's how they would be for now anyway. You can train her to find earth worm on her own by first let her get to know how delicious the earth live earth worms are. Then next time when she is hungry get a bigger tub than you used to feed her with some obstacles like Small fake plants and scattering the live worms around then put her in to find them. If she can't you can help her by moving her body slowly closer to it. ( with some kind of tweezer or thin stick) . Kinda training a puppy lol. :D
 

Ronni

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I have been trying to get her to search them out but literally as soon as they drop either from falling off the tweezers or from her missing during her snap, she will not touch them again! Even if I put them in front of her face It's like she's knows that it touched the floor! Hahaha I have attempted earthworms a few times, she really enjoyed it the first time but ended up spitting up the last piece she ate and doesn't want them any more. I think it may have freaked her out a little.

As for the the pet shop ones, they definitely said twice a week and they had them in a tank together (one of the stores plant tanks) at pretty regular temperatures. They seemed a little thin but generally healthy and had no interest in each other from the couolebofntines I've seen them. I think they were just treating little axies the same as regular axies.
 

Ronni

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And the thing is she can hunt. She will hunt down and follow the tweezers, I usually know she's had enough because she'll stop approaching them and walk away.
 
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