Hand feeding

[darren]

Hi all,
I am new to keeping axolotls and was wondering how to train them to hand feed? Mine will only eat live food and wont touch pellets or anything not moving.

Also any tips on what to feed them other than live food and pellets?

thanks

 

[nikki]

mine are still babies, but i have to transfer them from the aquarium to the feeding bowl on a spoon and after doing that for the last 3 weeks they seem to be catching on and are starting to not swim away from it!

 

[maggie]

When I first got mine, they were 3.5". I would turn off the corner filter to feed them. Without the filter being on, they tended to swim to the surface. After doing that several times, they realized that they got food when the filter was off. This made it easier for me to give them bloodworms and also kept my arm dry. After they got bigger, I bought some salmon pellets. If I drop the pellets near their nose, they are usually good about catching them. If they are hungry enough they will go searching for missed ones in the gravel.

What kind of pellets are you using? A pet shop told me they like brine shrimp pellets, but those are too hard and do not smell as good to the axolotls as salmon. Mine won't eat ones made with brine shrimp.

Good luck!

 

[darren]

I tried to feed her a small piece of bacon and she flew at it and ate it straight up! I am going to try trout pellets when i get a chance. I am currently using gravel and have read about it being swallowed, I guess the pet shop used red gravel as its just appearing in my tank and mine is black, would switching to pebbles that cant be swallowed be a good idea? Finally, my tank has a underwater filter but gets cloudy real quick, could this mean someting bad?

 

[maggie]

Since axolotls are prone to swallowing gravel, switching to larger stones is a good idea. I've never had an underwater filter, but is your tank cycled?

 

[cynthia]

Darren - I am not hip on the idea of feeding bacon, it just seems so wrong. As far as foods go earth worms, soft salmon pellets, the occasional cricket, grasshopper, strip of fillet fish. Earth worms make a very good staple. Axolotls seldom refuse them and "they are good for them".

Switching to larger stones or to sand is probably a good idea. The undergravel filter can not be used with sand however.

You can put a small plate or piece of slate in the tank and feed pellets off of it to help keep them from eating gravel.

Cloudy water is not good. As Maggie said "Is your tank cycled?"

 

[darren]

I have changed from gravel to stones, whick look much nicer. My tank had cleared up alot this morning so tried to use as much of the same water as possible when switching the gravel, its much clearer now. I have purchsed some worms from a bait shop, they had run out of trout pellets, does it have to be trout pellets? would getting the pellets with the strongest smell be a good idea? Will try and get a pic of her asap.

 

[cynthia]

Darren - I feed soft salmon pellets, though I have tried regular shrimp pellets and hard salmon pellets. The hard pellets were pretty much rejected by my axolotls. But that could just be because they are used to the soft ones.

Mine prefer worms to pellets any day, but I do make them eat pellets at least once a week.

Strong odor would make the pellets easier for them to find.

 

[brendan]

My juvi's have been hand fed ever since i got them at around 3 weeks old. They always eat by hand and are very reluctant to take food off the ground.

My adults it took only a few days for them to realise food comes from my hand not the ground and since then they are like the juvis.

I feed mine a varied mix of

Earthworms (adults)
Crickets (adults and juvis)
Frozen Bloodworms (adults and juvis)
Mealworms (adults - treat)
Carnivore Pellets (adults and juvis)
Shrimp Pellets (juvis)