How frequently do you feed your adult axolotl? How many earthworms in a feeding?

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faebugz

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Hi all, I thought that I had a pretty good handle on how much I was feeding my lotls Arthur and Lavender. I generally feed them one large (proportionate to their size) earthworm every 3 days. I fed Arthur more when I first rescued him as he was severely under weight, but he has a nice big belly now so he gets the same frequency as Lavender.

Imagine my surprise when the other day I saw lavender attempting to eat him through the divider!

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She was doing the whole, "put nose against thing to smell and confirm potential tastiness- chomp incoming!!" Before smashing her nose into the mesh.

Is this because she's hungry? I used to feed her every day or every other day, but I ended up slowing down around the end of August because she got a throat infection and wasn't interested in food. She's all healed up now, but even when she was eating the worms again she wouldnt seem very interested or hungry.

Arthur is closing in on 8" and still growing (I got him in April at barely over 5" and 1.5 years old). Lavender is almost 11" and 2.5 years old, she is also still growing surprisingly albeit slowly. I got her at 4" and 1 years old, also severely underweight.

They both have big round bellies. Should I be feeding them more, or is it normal for them to be constantly hungry like a lab would be?

Part of the reason why I cut back is to keep nitrates down, since they are in a 30 gallon together. I would like to switch them into my 50 gallon eventually, but until then this is what I've got.

Anyway! Would love to hear what everyone's feeding schedule is like :)
 

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Hi,

Your axolotls both seem perfectly healthy, so no stress.
I think lavander saw Arthur moving through the divider and couldn't smell it. This discrepancy may have troubled it.

As for the feeding frequency, several sites say the belly must be as wide as the head.
 
Hiya, I just wanted to say they are lovely. I posted a similar question about feeding but no response lol. Anyway I feed my 2 one cube bloodworm in the morning between them and some junior pellets in the evening. They are 16wks old. I read to give them what they can eat between 1 minute at 3 minutes if that's any help. Mine seem to hunt a lot and swim a lot but when I gave them a cube each I didn't see them I think they may have been super full up and couldn't be bothered to move around. Maybe it was too much 🤔❤️
 
Caltastic said:
Hiya, I just wanted to say they are lovely. I posted a similar question about feeding but no response lol. Anyway I feed my 2 one cube bloodworm in the morning between them and some junior pellets in the evening. They are 16wks old. I read to give them what they can eat between 1 minute at 3 minutes if that's any help. Mine seem to hunt a lot and swim a lot but when I gave them a cube each I didn't see them I think they may have been super full up and couldn't be bothered to move around. Maybe it was too much 🤔❤️
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i’d suggest cutting up earthworms and offering them to your little kiddos. they’re much healthier than bloodworms and should, stimulate growth well :)
 
I feed my Axolotl one nightcrawler a week and four to six carnivore pellets three days later, so she gets fed twice a week.
I would like to think that I am not underfeeding her, given that her belly is roughly the same width as her head.
 
I feed mine half a large nightcrawler each, 3 times a week. All six of my axies have a good head-to-body size ratio on this feeding schedule.
 
axolotl nerd said:
i’d suggest cutting up earthworms and offering them to your little kiddos. they’re much healthier than bloodworms and should, stimulate growth well :)
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OK lovely thank you so much I will definitely do that. 😁💖
 
axolotl nerd said:
is that a copper? they’re gorgeous!
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So mum is a Mum black Mel, dad is a copper Lucy. So I think that makes Chingu a copper Lucy and Amigo a black Mel. Do you think the worm was too? big a watch a you tube video and theirs were pretty big. My babies are 17 wks today they hatched o July 4th.
 
Well, the feeding schedule has changed.
Over the past week I have fed Mash two nightcrawlers and she seems to still be able to eat.
For whatever reason, her appetite has gotten much bigger.
The only thing that I can think of is that I raised my house's temperature from 66 degrees to 68 due to winter coming.
Has anybody else experienced a sudden bigger appetite in their Axolotl?
 
Caltastic said:
So mum is a Mum black Mel, dad is a copper Lucy. So I think that makes Chingu a copper Lucy and Amigo a black Mel. Do you think the worm was too? big a watch a you tube video and theirs were pretty big. My babies are 17 wks today they hatched o July 4th.
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They have grown super fast I collected them on 16th of September. They were so fragile I was scared to death for the hour drive home lol
 
It's from Yorkshire worm farming What do you guys think.?
"By the age of 6 months they are a good size and should be eating two full worms each. It is about now you can increase the size of worm you buy. From a breeders point of view the best size of worm you can buy from now on is the mixed size. You may still have to cut the worms to an eatable size but the amount you buy will last you longer so financially your better off."

" Once they are 8 months old you will be able to feed them the full sized worm of the mixed pack and they will happily eat 2 or 3 good sized worms a day, but remember just because they eat it does not mean they want it. As long as your axolotl eats two worms a day in the first two years of its life then all is good."

" As they grow older and still grow in size they will be able to eat large worms, you can upgrade to the the large dendrobaena worms, they may at times not be hungry once they reach two years old or older so you can slow down the feeding by only giving them a worm 3 times a week."
 
Mash_01 said:
I feed my Axolotl one nightcrawler a week and four to six carnivore pellets three days later, so she gets fed twice a week.
I would like to think that I am not underfeeding her, given that her belly is roughly the same width as her head.
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I think I over fed mine the worms today Amigo ran away from it! 😅 So I'm going to to see how it goes every other day I think and if it's still too much I will make it less.
 
Our Lucy had a tremendous appetite until fairly recently. I should mention that we got her quite young (she was about as long as my thumbnail when we got her). Her first 2+ months were spent in various sized tubs while we cycled her home. She's now in a 20 gallon long. We've absolutely pampered her as best we can. We got her on May 4th, so assuming she was no more than 2 weeks old at that point, she's now 7 months old. She's 9 1/2" long and until very recently, she grew like a weed :) It's become very apparent that a larger tank would be better for her and we plan on moving her into a 40 gallon breeder as soon as we can. Cooling is provided by a custom made 5" acrylic canopy (currently held together with tape) with two 90mm computer cooling fans mounted on one end. It's an ongoing project, the next step is learning how to wire in a thermostatically controlled fan speed circuit.

She's been on a diet of worms since July. At first we fed her red wigglers, but she made it pretty clear she doesn't care for them much. Then we moved on to earthworms from the garden. Now that the cold weather has arrived, we've switched to nightcrawlers. We've always wanted to augment the worms with Rangen salmon pellets, but given how hard they are to source in Canada, we've just stuck with worms, along with an occasional treat of jumbo bloodworms. We tried one brand of axolotl pellets from the LFS but they were not soft, and appeared to cause her problems. Not to mention the cost, compared to Rangen pellets, if we could only actually get them.

Anyway, she was eating daily until recently (yes, she would devour an entire nightcrawler most days), when she often started eating less some days, sometimes ignoring food on the day after devouring a whole nightcrawler, or else attempt to eat, only to spit it out. Her digestive tract also appears to have slowed down. We've pretty much concluded it's time to get her used to every other day feedings (although I'm sure she'll beg on non-food days, whether she can actually swallow it or not, lol). BTW, any feedback on this would be appreciated. While it's clear she should not be fed daily once reaching adulthood, not much is actually posted about when/how to make the transition.

We've always gauged her food by her willingness to eat, combined with the size of her belly compared to her head. Here's a pic I just took of her admiring her own reflection :)

PXL_20211117_204052198.MP.jpg
 
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BradleyB said:
Our Lucy had a tremendous appetite until fairly recently. I should mention that we got her quite young (she was about as long as my thumbnail when we got her). Her first 2+ months were spent in various sized tubs while we cycled her home. She's now in a 20 gallon long. We've absolutely pampered her as best we can. We got her on May 4th, so assuming she was no more than 2 weeks old at that point, she's now 7 months old. She's 9 1/2" long and until very recently, she grew like a weed :) It's become very apparent that a larger tank would be better for her and we plan on moving her into a 40 gallon breeder as soon as we can. Cooling is provided by a custom made 5" acrylic canopy (currently held together with tape) with two 90mm computer cooling fans mounted on one end. It's an ongoing project, the next step is learning how to wire in a thermostatically controlled fan speed circuit.

She's been on a diet of worms since July. At first we fed her red wigglers, but she made it pretty clear she doesn't care for them much. Then we moved on to earthworms from the garden. Now that the cold weather has arrived, we've switched to nightcrawlers. We've always wanted to augment the worms with Rangen salmon pellets, but given how hard they are to source in Canada, we've just stuck with worms, along with an occasional treat of jumbo bloodworms. We tried one brand of axolotl pellets from the LFS but they were not soft, and appeared to cause her problems. Not to mention the cost, compared to Rangen pellets, if we could only actually get them.

Anyway, she was eating daily until recently (yes, she would devour an entire nightcrawler most days), when she often started eating less some days, sometimes ignoring food on the day after devouring a whole nightcrawler, or else attempt to eat, only to spit it out. Her digestive tract also appears to have slowed down. We've pretty much concluded it's time to get her used to every other day feedings (although I'm sure she'll beg on non-food days, whether she can actually swallow it or not, lol). BTW, any feedback on this would be appreciated. While it's clear she should not be fed daily once reaching adulthood, not much is actually posted about when/how to make the transition.

We've always gauged her food by her willingness to eat, combined with the size of her belly compared to her head. Here's a pic I just took of her admiring her own reflection :)

View attachment 90599
Click to expand...
Wow how pretty 😍
Thank you for sharing how you feed her its very helpful.
 
i feed my 3 year old axolotl one big or wo small earthworms every other day
 
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