Question: Is this normal behaiviour?

[lucyz83]

It's getting slightly colder here as winter has come and she is eating much less frequently. I normally feed her a worm each day but now she will only eat one every two or three days. She's also taken to swimming around the tank really quickly, bumping into plants and splashing a bit as she does so, and then just laying about and being generally inactive throughout the day. Is this normal? her temperature has dropped by about 2-3 degrees due to the climate.

Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance c:

 

[vanjaif]

My youngest axolotl acts that way from time to time too. How old is your axolotl? I would advice you to check your water quality, it can seem like she is annoyed at something, for me it was often the currency that caused the stress or odd behavior.

You shouldn't be worried about the feeding, as colder water slows down their metabolism, meaning that she needs less food

 

[Astrolotl]

suddenly thrashing around can be a sign of stress. Causes can be: not using enough dechlorinator, poor water quality, too much water movement, or too much light

 

[Skudo09]

Axolotls will tend to eat less in colder temperatures. Axolotls don't have very good brakes and tend to bump into things when they are swimming about. But if the movement is quite frantic it may be worth testing the parameters and making sure there are no water quality issues that may be causing stress and check that you are using the correct amount of dechlorinator. Have you changed anything in the tank when this behaviour started?

 

[lucyz83]

Thanks for the responses! She's about a year old now so not very old and has seemed to clam down now, her water parameters are fine at the moment but i think it may have been water movement as i noticed that i had moved a large plant in the tank too far over while cleaning which was making a current flow around the tank, since i moved the plant back in front there's been no more crazy swimming. That's good to know about the temperature too, she's now consitently eating a live worm every 3 days which is reassuring