Beginner help!

[waltzkatzenblut]

Hello! I am an extremely new aquarist and I have recently come into the possession of two axolotls. They are about 5/6 inches long each and I have them in a twenty gallon long tank which I plan two upgrade them to a thirty gallon next month. I've had them for little over a week and I've noticed that they keep swimming up to the surface fairly frequently to gulp air with their gills flicking occasionally. I'm at a loss as to what may be the cause and I'm hoping I can get some advice. I have a glass top lid and I'm wondering if that might be restricting oxygen? I also have a fine sand black substrate and its a live planted tank. I recently added an airstone with restricted flow and it doesn't seem to have helped. At the moment, my melanoid, Mothman, seems the most agitated and spends a lot of time near the surface lately constantly swimming up whereas Bartleby my leucistic stays under the filter a lot with his gills flicking fairly frequently. My ammonia level was at about 1 earlier this week and I have been doing 20% partial water changes every two days this week and have it down to about .5 and their temperature sits at 70. Last I checked my pH was 7.8/7.9 and my nitrates and nitrite were good. I'm looking to invest in a chiller though I don't know of a good one and it is the dead of summer in southern Texas (if anyone knows of a good reliable one please let me know I do have a fan blowing over the top at all times too). Any advice would be so appreciated, they still eat normally, a half a night crawler worm each morning and are fairly active, though I don't know if that's mainly from swimming to the top. Thank you for listening and if anyone can help I would be more than grateful, I just want to do right by my two new kids!

 

[waltzkatzenblut]

Sorry for the awful picture I'm away from home but Mothman keeps floating near the surface and I'm very concerned. If anyone has any recommendations please help!!

 

[Genny]

I have an aquarium fan cooling rack, it's got 6 fans and clips to the side of the tank with little plastic bolts. It's like a long board of side by side computer fans, but it's fantastic at lowering temperature by about 3 degrees Celsius (that's 37.4 F according to google) when it's a bit toasty. The fans will only help if you are blowing air across or at the water surface, so you'll have to remove your lid for that anyway. Obviously, yours are still young, so you'll have to put something in place to stop them from jumping as little ones quite like to. I cover the whole of the top of my tank in netting that's for making ladies underskirts from (you can buy it on Ebay or in fabric stores), I just duck tape it down and around the sides with two little holes for the clips to go through.

On the floating to the surface: when mine were that young they often liked to float to the surface. My water parameters were almost always perfect and they were always eating. Check to see if Mothman's gills become waaaay fluffy. This can sometimes mean they're a little oxygen deprived, though if they've always been fluffy, it probably doesn't mean much. You've got a HOB filter by the looks of it, so the water should be well oxygenated anyway. Check to also see if his gills are forward facing in a sort of "C" shape. If they are bent toward his face, he is stressed, though it could be for a few reasons.

Gill flicking is pretty normal behaviour though, as is the occasional gulp of air if your parameters are right, which they are. I used to constantly think Lonestar was dead because she liked to hang out at the top so much (she'd always come down though). She tries to still, but she's fully grown and a bit fat, so she cant really stay floaty anymore, she's a big swimmer though, likes to follow me around the room the weirdo.

I'm sure Mothman is fine, but there's lots of people here, so you'll likely get more opinions if I'm wrong