5 Axies, 1 tank.

[dragonlady]

@Shizeric - lol, lol!!!

@electronfusion - How are we harming the water cycle through our pets' maintenance? Where does our used water go? However your water system works, wherever you are, I believe the water does eventually return to the Earth. Therefore, rejoining the water cycle.

If you are truly bothered by what you believe you are doing to the environment with the normal maintenance of your pets, perhaps you should reconsider your continuance of pet keeping at all. For if you feel the necessity to minimize your pet's comfort level then who is really suffering? Not meant to be a downer, just more food for thought.

 

[electronfusion]

I understand, but rest assured, I have taken "environmental sustainability" into consideration as well. To counteract the extra water I use caring for my animals, I only take 1 shower a week. Further more, I do not brush my teeth nor do I drink water. In fact, I have even dumped a great deal of toxins into the local resevoir, to prevent people from using the water and therefor wasting it. I know I'm just 1 person, so it doesn't make too much of a difference....but I like to feel like I'm actually doing something for mother Earth.

If you are truly bothered by what you believe you are doing to the environment with the normal maintenance of your pets, perhaps you should reconsider your continuance of pet keeping at all. For if you feel the necessity to minimize your pet's comfort level then who is really suffering?

Um, ouch!? Again, I didn't mean to attack anyone's habits. Sorry if I came off as abrasive.

About the water: at least where I live, and I think over a lot of the country, what comes out of our water treatment plants still has been shown to contain high concentrations of artificial estrogens from plastics, as well as prescription drugs like birth control and cardiac meds, which DO effect wildlife. And whatever water we use is pulled from the clean natural supply and mixed in with our "used" supply with all the chemicals. So water does go back into nature, but not the way it came out to start with.

That said, consolidating water and equipment into one tank probably is more efficient. There are probably a lot of ways to be more efficient. I was offering one. Shizeric, I might consider trying yours also.

Dragonlady, I don't "feel the need to minimize your [my] pet's comfort level" one bit. My two adult axolotls are both larger, healthier, and conceivably much happier than when I got them, as are all of my pets.

Getting back to my original point (independent of any individual person's set-up)- there must be a point of diminishing returns for the space given to axolotls, as there is with every other species. The widest known data on this is from the former Indiana University Axolotl Colony, which ran for decades, kept axolotls in individual buckets of a few liters each, and reported lifespans of around 15 years. I wonder if any major institutions will study the lifespan-to-space correlation further?