Question about axolotl bullying tank mate and when to reintroduce the two

Hi, I am "new" to this forum, I lurk here a lot reading tips but this is my first post. Sorry if this should be under a subcategory I just didn't think it would fit..

I am newish to axolotls, I bought my first axie back in the first week of march on a whim. A local pet store had some for sale and I just decided to buy one because they're so cute. Basically, I just lurked all over the web finding out what I needed to be a good owner. So first axie is an albino named sherbert (she has red eyes which is why I determined albino over leucistic)

Back in the second week of June my boyfriend and his parents gave me a second axie and a 40 gallon tank to me for my birthday. This little guy came with the tip of his tail bitten off but he has almost completely regrown the tail which has been a cool process to watch.

so I have two axies the first is Sherbert (Female Albino) and the second is licorice (WT male). Licorice is noticeably smaller than sherbert, I actually didn't think he was sexually mature because he is so tiny in comparison

Okay, so the two were getting along so well. Three days after I get licorice, sherbet laid eggs, which was a shock. I "aborted" the eggs because I wasn't ready to deal with babies!!!!!! They also spent a bunch of time sitting next to each other and "cuddling"

In their new tank I added some new hiding holes (around mid-July) that I picked up from the good will one being a pretty vase and the other was a cave for lizards.

About two weeks ago we removed the cave because we realized the paint was chipping off of the cave and making the water cloudy.

All was well until about a week ago I noticed that sherbert had a cut on her leg. So I assumed licorice had bitten her, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he accidentally bit her thinking her leg was food. I increased his feeding (he knows when you are going to feed him, if you tap your hand on the water he will move up to the top and will snap at the turkey baster we use to deliver the clump of pellets to them)

so 2 days ago I found sherbert with the tip of her tail bitten off and her other front leg cut as well. When I tried to feed licorice he refused to eat but went up to the turkey baster as he normally does just without going for the food. So I decided I had enough of this domestic abuse and put licorice into the 10-gallon tank that I had originally bought for sherbert.

Today I made a new hiding hole out of river rocks that I sterilized. It provides the same amount of shelter that the lizard cave provided (also is pretty looking). Based off of what I read licorice is probably just stressed from the lack of hiding holes (we went from 4 to 3 and now are at 4 again)

Do you think it will be safe for sherbet to reintroduce licorice back into the tank?



TL;DR Smaller male axie is biting bigger female axie after removal of old hiding hole. I have replace the hiding hole with one of equal size. Do you think it will eventually be safe to reintroduce the two after the wounds have healed?



Edit:
Forgot to tell you what my tank conditions are. 40 gallon tank, with sand substrate, always at 67-70 F depending on the day, 20% water changes weekly, and only other creatures in the tank are the few surviving minnows I bought as feeder fish

Hi Paige and welcome to the forum. :happy:

I did much the same as you, I used the forum as a guest for a few months, then got my axolotls end of Feb and early March.

As for Licorice, it's not recommended to keep axolotls together if there is more than an inch difference in size, but that's normally for the safety of the smaller one. You may also want to consider whether you want to keep a male and female together anyway, and risk a lot of eggs. If you want to keep them in the same tank you could always use a divider to keep them apart, not only until they are similar sizes, but also as part of their reintroduction.

It may also be worth removing the feeder fish and introducing earthworms/nightcrawlers to their diet, as these are the best for them nutritionally.
Caudata Culture Articles - Worms

I hope that Sherbert heals well and please keep us updated on your progress.

Hi Donna,

Thanks for the reply!

Do you have any recommendations on divider brands? I think I might just go with that. I was just leaving them together without a divider because I had read it can take many months before the male can reproduce (or weeks) and I was just hoping that they wouldn't mate again or if they did it would be much later so that it wouldn't be a strain on sherbert.

As for their diet, the main food item I feed them is pellets. We do occasionally feed them earthworms, I have never tried nightcrawlers, so I will have to give that a try. We also sometimes throw in ghost shrimp which Sherbert usually are able to catch within the first 2 days, licorice is too slow to do so.

I also just purchased some crickets to feed them after the crickets die (I am freezing them to kill them and then plan on thawing them). The guy who I bought licorice from said he was hand feeding licorice crickets so I thought I would finally try it out, but I plan on removing their legs and head because I read somewhere that that's what you should do over feeding the whole cricket. But all of these things are just "treats" along with their pellets.

I haven't gotten to remove the feeder fish yet just because I don't have a place to put them. I am planning on taking them to my mom's because my younger brothers have a tank full of just random feeder fish (guppies mostly); so the addition of two minnows won't rock the boat there.

Licorice is still in the 10 gallon. And sherbert is healing well it looks like. Her arms look nearly completely healed, the cuts basically look like scars at this point but aren't leveled out with the rest of the skin on her legs (I don't know how else to describe it). Her tail hasn't shown any progress yet, or I just have been looking at it too much and can't tell.

Sorry for the slow reply, this forum doesn't work well on my phone (although I could read your reply in my email) and I have been recently slammed with work.

Glad to hear that Sherbert is healing well.
I've also read that males can take up to 3 months to have sperm ready. The divider will help to avoid injury, but would not be 100% effective against further eggs as a spermatophore could (theoretically) move through the divider with water movement.
I haven't had any need to use a tank divider, so wouldn't be able to recommend any, but if you search on ebay, Amazon, etc. you'll find some.
DIY tank dividers are also a possibility http://sillyaxolotls.wixsite.com/sillyaxolotls/diy-tank-dividers but the ones you can buy look better.
aquarium tank divider | eBay

I hope that this helps. :happy:

I had a similar thing happen some months ago when the smaller of my two axies ate two legs and the tail tip off the other one. I separated them with a tank divider in their 20 gal tank while the bigger one healed. Now I just moved them into a 40 gal tank with no divider, but hopefully with enough hides and food to keep them from chomping each other. We shall see! The attack happened after a trip where they didn't have as much food as normal, so I'm not sure if it was hunger or aggression. Please share how yours do!

I posted abou my two 6 inches golden ( same size) that got in to the endless worms tucker war every time they eat . I also ended the war with net divider after it gotten out of hand . In my conclusion is that sometime they can get bored , and to me boredom is a sigh of some level of intelligence. That's why they need lots of hiding place , things to do or explore is necessary for them. I have been observing them for many years , still when you keep lots of axie in large tanks together there will always be some that don't seem to sit well with individual others. A few years ago I purchased a large connectable hamster plastic play house and submersed it in to the 30 gallon tank to observed their behavior . It didn't take long at all for them to be in and all over it. . Think their behavior are very much like an old hamster ( cause they have bad eye sight and much slower) . So your boy Is smaller so probably he is still active and for your girl is more mature already so natually the younger one is gonna bounce around with nothing to do except annoying the older one. That's natural.