Acceptable for Axolotls

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Zach

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Are these fish acceptable as feeder fish for Axolotls?

White Cloud Minnow
Rosy Red Minnow
Fathead Minnow
Ghost Catfish
Small, minnow shaped goldfish (look like mini Koi, found at Petsmart)

Also are there any suppliments I could feed them to make them more nuritious?
 
The White Clouds would be your best bet. Just remember to only feed them as treats and not as a staple diet.
 
Avoid the goldfish.
I agree that Tanichthys are your best bet, just make sure you quarantine them first.
 
I thought they would be best, but i want to use them as well as ghost shrimp as the primary food. I think the shrimp are nutritious, and feed the minnows a suppliment to make them more nutritious. Would the shrimp be alright as a staple food?
 
what about the catfish, they seem to school and are really cool looking
 
The white clouds handle the colder temps we keep our animals at, and breed like rabbits. Best way to breed them is a well planted tank 10 gal+, no filter, and an airstone. Feed melano fruit flies, springtails, blackworms, baby brine shrimp, and a good flake like Hikari to get them breeding. Any sort of power filter/canister filter will wipe out the larvae. Also I wouldn't feed out the initial breeding stock as a quarentine measure. I keep my initial stock seperate from the offspring produced as a method of quarentine. The adult breeders in my experience will not eat the larvae.
 
I wasn't going to feed the inital generation (quarantine + i've seen what happens to guppies with excessive inbreeding), would they be ok with cherry and/or ghost shrimp?
 
A diet of shrimp and fish sounds awfully incomplete. The ideal (by far) fodder are earthworms, nothing beats them. You can suplement the earthworms with the shrimp and the fish (plus something like bloodworms or crickets for variety).
The catfish need different temps.
I´d stick with the white cloud minnows, but i wouldn´t house a school of them with the axolotl. I´d keep them seperately and feed when needed.
 
I thought I read on here or axolotl.org that shrimp are one of the better things to feed them because they are eaten in the wild, but I could be mistaken.
 
Crustaceans (a large variety of types) are a big part of most aquatic caudates diet, but they are not the only thing in their diet.
Variety is always better.
Shrimp make a great adittion to the diet, but i seriously doubt they would work well as an staple, not only because there may be deficiencies, but also because you would have to feed a lot of shrimps to an adult axolotl to kep it satisfied....a LOT of shrimps....
 
I'm using the shrimp to help cycle the tank, and larger shrimp can avoid smaller axolotls, so I think I can get at least a semi self-sustaining shrimp population before they are seen as food. I'll buy some pellets just in case. Would earthworms bought at a bait shop be alright or should I get them somewhere else?
 
Catfish have spines in their fins that will cause them to get lodge in the mouths or throats of axolotls.
 
Looking on wikipedia, the ghost catfish seems to only have small pectoral fins, but the temperature difference would be a problem. They would be cool to have otherwise.
 
Bait shop earthworms are perfect.
Where you live they will probably be Eisenia sp. which are very nutritious, calcium rich, and simply ideal for caudates. However, when disturbed or damaged they release a foul smelling liquid that some caudates find disgusting. It may take a little while until the axolotl gets used to the taste (or maybe not...some animals just don´t care).
 
Check also at Wal-mart. They carry 2 types of worms to choose from, the nightcrawlers will probably give you less of a hassle in terms of the axies rejecting them than the trout worms would.
 
That's great, for some reason I thought bait shop worms were not good. I use nightcrawlers for fishing and they sometimes secrete a slime, but I don't think it's the same. Also, I think my question in post #7 was misinterpreted, I meant if the shrimp and minnows were compatible, I don't want the shrimp to eat the fish larvae.
 
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