Question: New Axie owner with some questions!

My fiance and I went to our first reptile show yesterday, and instead of coming home with a scaled creature, we brought home our little amphibian friend (who needs a name).

While I did some research on axolotls before buying the little guy, we did not expect to go home with one! But he was too cute to pass up.

Anyway, on to the questions!

We have him in a 10 gallon aquarium at the moment (obviously getting a bigger one when s/he gets a little bigger) with no filter. We have a power filter that came with the aquarium, but it runs with a flow rate of 90 GPH, which sounds like it's too much for our little one, and it does not have a dial to adjust the rate. Would getting a filter meant for a smaller aquarium (I'm thinking about the Tetra Whisper 3i as a possibility) work well enough, or is there a decent way to block some of the flow from the filter we already have? I do know I'll be manually cycling the tank while the filter gets settled, so no worries there.

One thing I forgot to ask the seller was how often to feed the axie and how much to feed in the first place. We have the HBH Newt and Salamander pellets, and I plan on supplementing the pelleted diet with frozen bloodworms/tubifex worms as well. I work at a PetSmart in the area which has the Hikari brand of both, but I don't know where to buy the pellets and/or live blackworms, which is what s/he is eating now (we bought some pellets from the seller). The blackworms were its travel food, and they still aren't finished off, so I have a little time to figure this out. I'm in the Kansas City area, so if anyone knows of some other pet stores in the area that would supply either the pellets or worms, that would be awesome!

Lastly, our little one is on a bare-bottom tank. I'm going to put sand in there eventually (I have seen a lot of posts about the playsand at Home Depot, the deals on that sound amazing), but he's so tiny that I don't feel comfortable giving it a substrate s/he could accidentally swallow. What size is a good size to switch it over to a substrate? S/he's around 2 to 3 inches now.

Thank you all for reading! This forum looks like an awesome place. =)

At that size they should eat every day, to make sure they fatten up and grow quickly as for the sand, I don't know the exact age but maybe when they look like tiny adults not tiny babies i would say maybe 10-15cm to switch to sand but avoid letting him eat off the ground regardless age as a build up of sand ingestion would be rather uncomfortable. Feed off a feeding bowl or jar

A filter need to push 4x your volume per hour - for a 10 gal you need a 40GPH filter, and yes the 90 is too big.

You can break up any current with ornaments and plants, but at less than 4" I would consider keeping him in a tub until he's a bit bigger - the current affects small ones a lot more than bigger axies.

Pellets aren't the best food for babies that size, bloodworms or blackworms are a better choice until he's a bit bigger. Earthworms are the best staple, you can get bait worms and set up a worms farm yourself - free food forever. Feed every day until he's at least 6".

Stick with a bare bottom for now, once he gets to 5" sand should be OK.

Thanks for all the help you guys!

Definitely getting a feeder bowl today. I'll look into getting earthworms, but I'm not sure of where our nearest bait shop is located.

I'd love to keep the little one in a tub, but our cat would be all over that setup. We live in an apartment, so there's not a lot of doors to keep her out. xD

How much every day should I be feeding? S/he's still got a good number of blackworms (the seller gave us a good handful of them), but obviously with being introduced to a new environment s/he's been eating varied amounts of them. The frozen bloodworm cubes are a good size too, so I'm wondering if I should cut those in half as well.

It sounds like we'll wait on the filter for awhile too. I'm more worried about the aeration than anything. I'm thinking we might switch him over to having a mesh top tank, but I worry the cat will jump all over that too.

I figured we'd be waiting on the sand for awhile! Good to know a size range though.

Thanks again!