How do axolotls get gorgeous gills?

[Petersgirl]

So, axxie lovers, here is my fluff question for the day.

After a few tense weeks of one of my princesses not eating, she is finally back to normal and munching on mussels, chewing cockles and biting bloodworms!

Having got back to the level, I found myself wondering about gills. A tad superficial, perhaps, but I'm wondering how one gets those beautiful, frondy gills that grace the axolotl calendar yearly. As there is no L'Oréal for axxies *sigh*, I feel I must ask the resident experts for their advice.

I've seen many gorgeous axxies with lovely gills. All of my axxies have very small, stubby fronds on their gills, and one just has stubby everything.

Only one of the tanks is oxygenated (with one axxie, named Pig, in it) and they all get water changes weekly. I don't know the parents of any of my four adults, and the sub-adult (Pig) came from two of the other adults. Other axxie parents who had some of the babies from the same batch of Pig have lovely gills!

So how did you do it? Was it all genes? Frequent water changes (as suggested by Xian and a zookeeper friend of mine)? Lack of an air pump?

Please share your tips below!

 

[cabbysarus]

Both of my tanks have the same bubbler and waterfall filter, but one has big fluffy gills and the other has tiny stubby gills... I don't know what the deal is... I can't figure it out either...

 

[Hoagii]

If only there was an easy way to get beautiful gills

I can say that my own axolotl lost ~50% of her gill fullness after I added an air pump. She was still growing at the time, so that may also be part of it (water quality is fine so don't kill me!)

I attached pictures from June and August so you can see the difference. I'm so sad that she lost all that lovely fluff. She's lucky I love her anyway

 

[LSuzuki]

Genetics is definitely a big part of it. I've raised babies from eggs from different breeders at the same time, and the ones whose parents have gorgeous gills have noticeably nicer gills themselves. I suspect stubby gills are much more common than one would think by the pictures on-line ... I know I don't post pictures of our stubby-gilled one, just of the pretty-gilled ones.