Earth (garden) worms

My girlfriend has a female axie around 5 months old (shes about 10 cm long). Today we started to feed her earth worms. And i have a few questions.

How many worms is enough for a day?
How often should she be fed worms?
Can i feed her guppies?
Can i feed her crickets?
Can i give her a mixture of pellets, worms, guppies and crickets?
How often should she be fed period? As often as she wants or what?

Thanks.

I have 25 Axolotls of similar length. I just feed them pellets, but any of the foods you mentioned should be ok. You'll probably want to use pellets as a staple food and the other ones just now and then.
I usually feed mine two, occasionally three times a day, as they get older the frequency they are fed should be decreased.

Ok i fed peachy (my gf's axie) 2 earth worms today probably about 4-5 hours ago, she ate them as there was no sign of them in her mouth.

Now the two worms are at the bottom on the tank all covered in brown slim, they look whole but are a bit chewed looking.

Has peachy passed the worms or regurgitated them?

If she has passed them did she get anything outta that meal?

Also if she has regurgitated them why would this be? To big a meal? or made her sick?

(Message edited by brendan on December 30, 2004)

Brendan your axie has regurgitated the worms. You probably fed too much.

At 10cm your axie will still enjoy adult brine shrimp. Good fun too watch too!

If you want to feed a worm then pick somehting about an inch long for this size axie and no more than one a day.

They will eat guppies but read some other threads regarding the use of feeder fish and of the problems you can expect.

Crickets can be fed but I think the nutritional value is near to zero....someone correct me if i am mistaken. Pellets are always a good choice.

The key is to maintain some variety...healthy balalnced diet and all that.

I don't think crickets are as nutritionally valuable as some of the other items mention. However, they are a good supplement and your axolotls won't starve to death if you do use them from time to time. I fed mine crickets exclusively for about a month with no problems.

Over the summer I'd collect about a dozen field crickets/camel crickets and simply drop them into the tank. My axolotls would swim to the surface and pick them off one by one. They seemed to really enjoy eating them and would become quite swollen from the amounts they consumed.

Wild crickets have a high nutritional value, just be sure you collect them from an area you know to be free of pesticides. The crickets you buy from a pet store are a different story. Other than some protein, they have no nutritional value. They are still a good food source though, because their nutirtional value can be increased through a process called "Gut Loading".

Gut loading is done by feeding the crickets a highly nutritious diet before feeding them to your animals. Think of the cricket as an empty capsule. Whatever you put in it is passed on to the animal that eats it. Put the crickets in a container with some pieces of carrot, brocolli, apple, etc. for 24 hours before giving them to your animal. I do this before feeding crickets to any of my animals. For axolotls, though, I'd stick to pellets and frozen foods. IT's just simpler that way.

Actually the commercial crickets (or any other commerically available insect) need(s) to fed the diet for at least 48 hours before the levels are restored to preshipping values.
The statement that they have no nutritional value other than protien is incorrect (unless you have some recent citations that contraindicate some of the previous literature?) as they are deficient (not totally lacking) in some fats, protiens and minerals.
For gutloading, simply supplying a variety of vegetables will not restore all of the lost nutritional values as you should also supply a complete food that they can consume (such as ground dry dog food, or fish flakes).
If the goal is to increase the calcium levels of the feeder then there are some other rules to use that would be too long to include in this post.

Ed

I got in the habit of using the words "no nutritional value" while working at a pet store. Some people have the attitude that as long as they have a minimal nutritional value, their animals will be all right. It just made sure to drive the point home. But, old habits die hard. Didn't mean to mislead.

where does everyone get their pellets from???? Bertie will get bored of bloodworms i feel!