Question: Cleaning/siphoning

[neptalialberto]

I am quite new at keeping an axolotl, or well, I have no experience with aquatic pets in general for that matter. I have done my research before getting him of course, but one thing I'm unsure about is the siphoning/vacuuming. I have only had him for 5 days so I'm still trying to figure out how much to feed him as I tend to overfeed and then leftovers... I feed him with freezedried bloodworms or artemia that come in cubes, so its rather hard to judge for me. So with leftovers and his waste (he seems to be rather messy) I have to be siphoning every day with the aquarium vaccuum, and this leads to a lot of water loss, today for example I lost roughly 5 litres trying to clean it. My question is, is it safe to just replace the lost water with some more treated water? (taking in mind I'm pretty much having to do this every day) or is there any other suggestions or anything I can do about the water loss?
Thanks.

 

[dr34mr]

There are a few tricks I have used when feeding. I used to use a shallow saucer (for a tea cup) for feeding on, which helped to contain the mess when feeding pellets and solid foods. I have replaced it with a rock that i have carved and buried in the sand. I like the more natural look.

A good trick is to use a jar for feeding messy foods such as bloodworm cubes:

1. Put jar in sideways in tank until full of tank water (minimise water current)
2. Turn upright and drop cube in.
3. Wait for cube to defrost and contents to settle
4. Lay sideways on the floor of the tank
5. Wait for axie to find and eat the food (and get out of the jar)
6. Turn upright and remove from tank

This should minimize the amount of leftover food in the tank. Make sure you don't use too small a jar, so your axie doesn't get stuck inside, and that the jar doesn't have any chemicals on it before use.

 

[dr34mr]

In regards to water changes, i would not want to replace more than a 20% per day.

I use a siphon for cleaning and I remove poo and excess food daily, which requires about 1-2L water removal. Once a week i do a larger clean, which requires me to remove about 5L of water.

 

[Kerry1968]

When you are removing the water with a syphon you can always let the water you have removed settle in the bucket, then syphon the top two thirds back into the tank, leaving the muck behind. That's what I do when I end up syphoning off too much for a regular 20% change.

 

[neptalialberto]

Ooooh thank you very much for your helpful comments, specially yours Phil, I will definetly try that out, thanks!