Interesting situation involving two tanks.

Hello everone! Ok this is kind of complicated. I have two Axies a large black one (fatty) and a smaller gold one (goldie) this morning while feeding fatty grabbed goldies leg in his mouth. Of cource goldie panicked and ripped her leg out of his mouth, I think she may have broken it or in any case done some structural damage, her fingers are also a bit shorter on the damaged hand and she is not using it at all. Now I think I have a solution for letting goldie get some peace to recover and hopefully fatten up. I want to put her in a smaller tank beside the big tank (smaller tank 10letres and large tank 50 - 60 litres) and put one of the airstones in the lage tank into the smaller tank, would this idea work? Running the two airstones off the one pump and what effect would this have on the bigger tank? Let me know what you guys think.
Donna.

Running two airstones of one pump is normal practice. I have one pump running 4 at the moment powering 4 lifting tubes for the undergravel filters.

If your just using them to create a bit of circulation at the surface then you'll be more than fine.

Hi Donna,
I agree, splitting the air is no problem. You might want to consider using a tank divider instead of a second tank. If you do set up a smaller tank, use water and ornaments from the large tank to start it - this will reduce stress, and decrease the time for the second tank to become established (cycled).

cool, thanks guys. Do you think its possible for axies to have a personality clash, goldie seems much happier in her new tank, swimming around more and everything.

I'm hoping Mik or some other axie pro will answer this, Donna. I do know of one case where an axie had to be kept in isolation because it was always picked on by any other axie it was put with.

The melanoid and wild type axolotls I have seem to be more aggressive than the other axys. The melanoids seem to be real aggressive. Normally full grown axolotls that are well fed don't fight with other full grown axolotls. Mixing different sizes can be a problem. Maybe you should seperate until your little one catches up with the big one.

John knows a bit more on aggressive natures of axies but I have golden, melanoid, wildtype, leucistic and melanoid albinos all in same tank with no problems at all.

I think a lot of it comes down to number of axies in the size of tank. I have 5 in a 4ft tank and 4 in a 3ft tank. Each tank loses one inmate from time to time as I transfer a pair to a breeder tank which is 18"x12"x12". All my axies are now between 225mm and 300mm.

Separating by size is good practice. The small ones can suffer badly if bullied or cornered.

But the short answer is yes some people have experienced one axie suffering at the paws of another and isolation is the best option. Axies don't seem to get lonely we just like to think they do ;-)