Re: Leaning Tank.
Ok. I noticed one of my axolotls strange behaviour in the tank. I thought ok amonia level is up. Tested the water for amonia levels, and sure enough, it was sitting on 1.5, yet we did a clean of the tank 6 days ago. It is a new tank about 3 weeks old with a good filter system, so why did I need to do another clean after 6 days.
Hi Aird3,
Your tank I would say is still going through its cycling which takes two to three months and the water is apparently suffering an ammonia spike. While cycling, you need to be doing daily 10% water changes. With an ammonia spike of 1.5 though (dangerously toxic to axolotl) I would be doing 20% daily water changes to bring that ammonia down. Six days between water changes is not sufficient while the tank is still cycling.
http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/cyclingEDK.shtml (This article explains cycling in more detail).
I have removed most of the gravel and put bigger rocks in the bottom of the tank...The amount of muck that was coming out of the gravel surprised me, considering it was vacumned 6 days ago.
Axies are messy little devils and rocks are difficult to keep clean, as you need to shift the rocks and check under the rocky substrate daily to remove debris. Have you considered sand as a substrate? It's much easier to keep clean. I was delighted by the difference when I changed large stones substrate to sand substrate.
I also cleaned the filter sponges.
When you cleaned the filter sponges, did you clean them by shaking the sponges in a bucket of your tank water? Or, did you rinse it under the tap?
If you cleaned it under the tap, you will have killed your beneficial bacteria.
When enough beneficial bacteria has colonised on your tank surfaces and in the filter, it will break your ammonia and nitrite levels to non toxic when cycling is complete. Once cycling is complete, 20% water changes only need to be done once a week.
Until cycling is complete though, you will need to take water readings daily and do 10-20% water changes daily depending on your ammonia/nitrite levels.
You may get a faster response if you post in the Axolotl section of the forum rather than the newt and salamander section.
Cheers Jacq.