Faelin is a girl!

[FungalZombie]

Today we found unfertalized eggs in her tank today, it took some looking up since we're new owners and were confused and thought something nasty was growing in the tank.
She layed them ontop of her rock/cave.
So we're excited, because we're sure Toothless is a boy since he has a bigger cloaca in the back and hasn't appeared to have layed eggs.
The two used to fight a lot and they were separated.
We are considering breeding them when they are older.
Is there any suggestions you can offer to new breeders?
I'm looking for all help.

 

[rachel1]

Congrats! In my experience, if you put two mature axis of opposite sex in together, you will get fertile eggs eventually. Raising all the little ones is the hard part! There are excellent articles on axolotl.org on egg development and raising larvae. Check out those if you think you want to raise some babies. My advice would be to start small, raising just 10 or 20 til you get the hang of it and feel comfortable with the whole process.

 

[FungalZombie]

Congrats! In my experience, if you put two mature axis of opposite sex in together, you will get fertile eggs eventually. Raising all the little ones is the hard part! There are excellent articles on axolotl.org on egg development and raising larvae. Check out those if you think you want to raise some babies. My advice would be to start small, raising just 10 or 20 til you get the hang of it and feel comfortable with the whole process.

Thanks, how do I control the amount of axies I look after? Will the website help me figure that out too?

 

[HayleyK]

You would have to cull the ones you don't want, which would be hundreds. Pop them in the freezer. Don't flush them, or pour them into a puddle/water source. You need to do this in the first few days, as they develop their nervous system very early on and it will be painful to cull them.

 

[FungalZombie]

You would have to cull the ones you don't want, which would be hundreds. Pop them in the freezer. Don't flush them, or pour them into a puddle/water source. You need to do this in the first few days, as they develop their nervous system very early on and it will be painful to cull them.

Oh okay, seems a little grim, but doable.

What do you feed them? I use frozen bloodworms for my axies right now. would babies eat the same?

 

[auntiejude]

No, newly hatched larvae are too small to eat bloodworm.
They usually eat baby brineshrimp - go read up on rearing on axolotl.org and the tutorial for hatching your own BBS in the stickies here.

Be warned - its hard work raising babies, but very rewarding.

 

[Bette]

Your other option for small live food would be grindal worms. I have had good luck feeding these to larvae.

 

[FungalZombie]

Okay I'll see if local pet stores happen to have brine shrimp. If not I'm sure they can get some in for me by the time we end up breeding, we'll be waiting for them to get closer to full size.