Question: Am I feeding my Axolotl too much?

Hi,
I'm a new Axolotl owner, I've had him about two months now and I haven't found any exact notes on how much is right to feed him.
I have been feeding him 2 cubes of defrosted Beef heartstring (and occasionally blood worms) every two days. They are about 1cm x 1cm and 5mm thick.
Am I feeding him too much or too little? He isn't very young but he isn't an adult, the pet store didn't know and couldn't tell me how old he was. It's also hard to get a good photo because the glass and bubbles skew it a bit.

Please help! I don't want to be over/under feeding my little darling.

I gave him to little sucker fishy friends the other day but he ate them in about an hour. It was a massacre really >.< He is always very excited to eat and does so with great gusto but I as I am new to this I don't know if that is normal ? Ugh. :uhoh:


Sorry for the quality. his size just occurred to me so I took a photo with my iPod.
Any opinions and suggestions would be fantastic thank you !

+ Any general advice you had as a beginner is really appreciated too. I feeed my lotty in his tank and the water is quite warm, are there any easy ways to cool it? I live in Australia and work a lot of the time so I can't be constantly adding ice cubes as I'm only home for parts of the day

Hey =),
hows it going?

With the food question, from what I have read I think beef heart is better off as an occasional treat rather then being the main diet. You might be better off feeding your little guy earthworms you find in the garden, im pretty sure (as long as there are no pesticides on them) they are the best food for axolotls.[FONT=Arial, Arial, Helvetica]

I tend to feed mine once a day and they seem to be doing pretty good =)
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Also Axolotls - Feeding covers alot of the foods so might also be worth having a look.



good luck =)
Very cute axie by the way!

Thanks so much - just with where I live it's hard to get a wide range of foods, y'know?
How many Earth worms should do you feed yours and how often?
Thanks again for the link and the help xo

Also, you're from Australia too?
Do you find it hard to keep your Axolotls tank cool? I'm from QLD D;

He looks like a pretty good weight, his torso should be about the same width as his head when looking from above, so he looks spot on.

You could drop the feeds to every three days or so as he gets older, and just keep an eye on his weight.

I hate the idea of feeding them beef heart, i'm one of the "Has a wild axie ever brought down and eaten a cow?" crowd - but that is just me.

My thoughts are this, beef heart has all the wrong sorts of fat on it, so although an axie might like it, and can survive on it, i wouldn't feed it to them everyday.

My Son would probably happily eat Big macs everyday, he'd survive on it, and love it, but it's not that good for a growing boy, right?

You can get a worm farm from here - compost worms, worm farm, delivered Australia wide - the little rotter pack is a beauty, i have 2 and the eat the scraps from a family of four nicely

Re cooling - get a chiller , i answered your other post on that.

Re your set up - those river pepples look too small to me, i'd get rid of them. Several look the same size, even smaller than your guy's head.

i know, everyone says "they are too big for him to swallow" until they swallow one. Do a search here in these forums to see xrays of the pepples axies have managed to ingest - you will be amazed. Put it this way, if we could swallow items on the same scale as axies, we could swallow a basketball.

Lastly, i just noticed you said you put sucker fish in with him? i know he ate them fast, but any sort of sucking fish should not go in with an axie. they can lacth on and cause all sorts of problems with an axies skin and mucus membrane - search for "mixing diasters" on the this forum for more info

Bren

I agree on the pebbles. Get rid of them asap.
I feed my axies once a day, a worm or 2 or a few pellets.
And never put anything in your tank with axies unless its another axie. They will eat the "tank mate" or it will eat/hurt/damage the axolotl.

Hey im from Melbourne and at the moment no worries with water temp i think when it does start to get hot i will end up getting a chiller. I tend to feed mine frozen blood worms and frozen brine shrimp at the moment as its easier and earthworms when I can make the boyfriend do it so maybe once a week ha ha. they seem to be a good weight and seem pretty happy. After I am finished with all the little baby's I think i might actually invest in a worm farm. Good site by the way Blackdog.

If you were to take out the pebbles, you might be better off using sand or even no substrate at all.

Also if the water gets really hot it might even help to add a frozen bottle of water to the tank keep 2 or 3 in the freezer so you can just rotate between bottles. just monitor the temp and you should be right.

Thanks very much everyone -- Most of his pebbles are a lot bigger than him, and I have fine sand on the bottom, but I will take out the smaller ones just in case.
Thanks x

May as well take them all out. Axies can get some pretty big rocks stuck in their mouths

I agree with Lizzy. You would be surprised what they can fit in their mouths! http://www.caudata.org/forum/f46-be...m/f58-sick-axolotl/73204-axolotl-surgery.html If you check out this thread and scroll down you'll see the size of the rocks inside the stomach. Quite amazing how they can fit that in their mouths and swallow it. Better safe than sorry when it comes to rocks.

I only left four or five really large one to prop up his hiding hole and hold down his plant :3

Atherose said:

I only left four or five really large one to prop up his hiding hole and hold down his plant :3

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Glad to hear that!