Alyria
New member
Hey there! I am a very new axolotl keeper and have my first guy Floki that I got back at the start on April. Bought 'him' as an inch long juvie, he's now about 5 inches long. He typically eats a mix of cut red wrigglers, frozen bloodworms, frozen brine shrimp, and SA Axolotl Diet Pellets. When feeding pellets, I either find the small ones in the shaker or a cut a large one in two. He's also only been regularly eating pellets since around May 11th, when he reached around 4 inches - I'm a school teacher, and the pellets have been a bit more convenient with the end of the school year chaos. Admittedly, he has only eaten pellets and wrigglers since around May 20th, again for convenience sake. He was eating twice daily (morning, afternoon) for the whole month of April, once or twice daily depending on behavior for a couple weeks in May, and now he's seemed to slow down about once every other day or twice every other day depending on behavior. I just recently (past 2 weeks) started letting him go over the weekend without food, since he is in my classroom and a 40 minute drive from my house! He's handled this well, his weight doesn't seem to be suffering.
He is (accidentally) housed with 2 freshwater shrimp - I honestly don't know what kind other than the "standard" 5 - 10 gallon tank orange shrimp. These were assumed dead after months of cycling the tank and not seeing them, but turns out they were alive! One is always hiding - I hadn't seen it since December until a couple weeks ago - and the other has a few specific places it likes to chill. I've left them in the tank because I don't really care if they end up eaten and had read they're not an impaction risk, Floki has been too small to eat them up to this point, and they seem to help with any stray bloodworms/brine shrimp that get missed by Floki.
I've been away for a couple days, I fed him a good sized meal Monday night and did a 30% routine water change. While I was away, a coteacher who is familiar with herps and exotics fed him Thursday morning with two pellets and then dropped two in the bottom of the tank by accident. I checked on him Thursday night, offered him a pellet, he ate it and then spit it back out. I removed all visible waste and the two pellets that had sank to the bottom as well as the offered pellet he spit up. He was a good color, did not appear bloated, emaciated, or overfed, moving well, greeted me when I cut the lights on, etc. His one "quirk" is he has one singular gill frill that is always a bit curled - it seems to be an anatomy issue and not a true gill curl, he's been doing it since I got him.
This morning I get in and find a slimier than usual looking poop, and a very fat axolotl. He looks overfed - I have overfed him once before, and it looks identical. his belly is very rotund, just slightly wider than his head, and is slightly "bumpy" on one side. His gills were all very curled this morning and he was pumping them around 7 times a minute (a lot more than usual), but he was moving just fine, not floating, and his tail was straight. API test kit comes out! His ammonia and nitrites were reading zero, nitrates were reading around 5.0 - 10.0 ppm which is about normal for this tank after a couple days past water change day. pH of water reads in the 8.1 - 8.2 range at all times, the school I work at is extremely rural and I test the water from the tap before doing water changes. Temperature is around 18C/64F. Fan, air stone disk, filter all running correctly. Whilst testing, I had started a water change and was cleaning up waste, ended up doing around a 60% or so water change. What I think has happened is that he has ate the social shrimp that is normally out and about - it's probably 3/4" long and Floki is big enough that I'm sure he could eat it if he really tried to choke it down. I don't think he is impacted, because over the course of the day he left another small slime-poop behind and seemed to not be as bloated already, though one side of his belly is still bumpy.
Here's my question/point of discussion.... How do you know when to fridge/when to worry? I'm very bad for overreacting with all my pets, and I'm very nervous to fridge for the first time. Given the large water change and the fact he was still getting around and acting normal, I went ahead and left him in the tank for the night with the plans to drive and check on him first thing this morning. I already have all the water and containers ready to go in the event I decide to fridge him in the morning. He has had an overeating experience once
TL;DR: If I suspect my axolotl ate a shrimp and is thus overfed and minorly constipated (but not impacted), should I fridge or not?
He is (accidentally) housed with 2 freshwater shrimp - I honestly don't know what kind other than the "standard" 5 - 10 gallon tank orange shrimp. These were assumed dead after months of cycling the tank and not seeing them, but turns out they were alive! One is always hiding - I hadn't seen it since December until a couple weeks ago - and the other has a few specific places it likes to chill. I've left them in the tank because I don't really care if they end up eaten and had read they're not an impaction risk, Floki has been too small to eat them up to this point, and they seem to help with any stray bloodworms/brine shrimp that get missed by Floki.
I've been away for a couple days, I fed him a good sized meal Monday night and did a 30% routine water change. While I was away, a coteacher who is familiar with herps and exotics fed him Thursday morning with two pellets and then dropped two in the bottom of the tank by accident. I checked on him Thursday night, offered him a pellet, he ate it and then spit it back out. I removed all visible waste and the two pellets that had sank to the bottom as well as the offered pellet he spit up. He was a good color, did not appear bloated, emaciated, or overfed, moving well, greeted me when I cut the lights on, etc. His one "quirk" is he has one singular gill frill that is always a bit curled - it seems to be an anatomy issue and not a true gill curl, he's been doing it since I got him.
This morning I get in and find a slimier than usual looking poop, and a very fat axolotl. He looks overfed - I have overfed him once before, and it looks identical. his belly is very rotund, just slightly wider than his head, and is slightly "bumpy" on one side. His gills were all very curled this morning and he was pumping them around 7 times a minute (a lot more than usual), but he was moving just fine, not floating, and his tail was straight. API test kit comes out! His ammonia and nitrites were reading zero, nitrates were reading around 5.0 - 10.0 ppm which is about normal for this tank after a couple days past water change day. pH of water reads in the 8.1 - 8.2 range at all times, the school I work at is extremely rural and I test the water from the tap before doing water changes. Temperature is around 18C/64F. Fan, air stone disk, filter all running correctly. Whilst testing, I had started a water change and was cleaning up waste, ended up doing around a 60% or so water change. What I think has happened is that he has ate the social shrimp that is normally out and about - it's probably 3/4" long and Floki is big enough that I'm sure he could eat it if he really tried to choke it down. I don't think he is impacted, because over the course of the day he left another small slime-poop behind and seemed to not be as bloated already, though one side of his belly is still bumpy.
Here's my question/point of discussion.... How do you know when to fridge/when to worry? I'm very bad for overreacting with all my pets, and I'm very nervous to fridge for the first time. Given the large water change and the fact he was still getting around and acting normal, I went ahead and left him in the tank for the night with the plans to drive and check on him first thing this morning. I already have all the water and containers ready to go in the event I decide to fridge him in the morning. He has had an overeating experience once
TL;DR: If I suspect my axolotl ate a shrimp and is thus overfed and minorly constipated (but not impacted), should I fridge or not?
