How to Care for Axolotls!

if you have an empty aquarium at home and you're looking for a unique display animal for it and exelon 'el is a great choice today I'll be showing you how to set up and care for axolotls caring for an axolotl is very similar to maintaining an aquarium with a few very important differences first let's start with the tank itself for annex a lottle and the minimum size tank requirement would be a 10 gallon tank like this one but once they get to a full adult size which can be about a foot i recommend upgrading them to a 20 long fill the aquarium up most of the way if not all the way right to the brim here with de chlorinated water of course using water from your tap will have chlorines so you need the conditioning drops that you can buy in any fish department at a fish store and then you treat the water let it sit for a few minutes and then it's axolotls place keep the temperature of the water to the low to mid-60s axolotls can survive an upper sixty degree fahrenheit water but once you hit the low 70s and especially like 74 degrees that's when you might start running into some health issues if not death at the bottom of the aquarium I recommend not using gravel because axel waddles might accidentally eat it thinking it's food and then it causes impaction issues instead you can use stand or nothing at all let's move on to the filter these will help keep your water quality clean and you can find them in any fish dept of really any pet store honestly just make sure you buy a filter that is rated for the size of the tank that you're going to be setting it up with axolotls don't like a lot of current so if you use too strong of a filter it will create too strong of a current but if you use too small or too weak of a filter you're like this 10 gallon tank filter for a 20 gallon tank then it won't be strong enough to keep the water clean most filters that you buy a pet stores come with a cartridge that slides into the back and inside that cartridge is filled with carbon and this will help clean your water for you and surrounding the carbon in that cartridge is usually a foam out lining and that foam will help strain the water and remove any gunk floating around in the water you take that cartridge and you place it just throw it away replace it with a new one every month but a more eco-friendly version that I like to use myself is using my own filter media where I use floss it's called and you just cut it to size and slide it in and instead of carbon I use P region P region will do the same thing if not more thorough job cleaning the water than carbon well and this you can reactivate by soaking in a 50:50 water bleach solution for 24 hours and then of course soaking it back in normal dechlorinated water for a couple of days before using it again so what I do is I have to peerage and packets for every one of my tanks one to be in the filter while the other one is being reactivated and then I can just switch them back and forth once a month just like you would the cartridge that comes with these filters and then I just take the floss or the sponge that's cut to size and I rinse it out and reuse it again it's eco friendly like I said and it contains a lot of beneficial bacteria on that sponge so it's actually better for the water quality anyway to reuse it even though the filter will do most of the cleaning for you we won't do all of it so make sure once a month you do a water change where you actually manually remove some of that dirty water and replace it with new fresh water if you just scoop the water out from the top that's taking the cleanest water out of the tank the dirtiest water is settling at the bottom so use a siphon like this it's a very well used siphon so it's kind of dirty use a siphon like this one to remove that water from the lowermost part of the tank and if you had a sand substrate at the bottom you'll have to kind of hover this siphon head above the sand so you don't suck up the sand with the water to when you're replacing that water you'll of course have to declare Nate it first before putting it into the tank I personally use API tech water conditioner because it's very concentrated and this only takes one drop per gallon in order to treat the water so this little bottle will last me literally a year or two with this tank another thing to keep in mind is when you're replacing that water make sure it's the same temperature or as close as possible to the temperature of the rest of the water in the tank which is again in the mid-60s you don't want to pour too warm of water in there and put your axolotl through shock now is the fun part where we get to decorate the inside of the tank use a variety of things they like to hide so give them some caves you can mix in some fake and live plants and you can also stick in some driftwood just get creative they love to climb around and they will use every inch of their tank today I think we'll add a cave over here and we'll pull a Bob Rost and add a happy little cave over on this side then we'll add some driftwood maybe it's kind of like a hammock that he can climb up into and finally some plants I'll add a fake one over there and then I'll add some live horn work too this is a free floating plant and it works great for axolotls and of course the most exciting part is probably adding the exelon itself if you're familiar with keeping aquariums you're probably thinking that he might need a water heater of some sort like tropical fish do right well since they need their temperature to be in the mid 60's do not use a heater actually just leave it room temperature in a cooler room of your house live plants are excellent to use in an axolotl tank because they will naturally break down the waste products like nitrates and nitrites and then we'll also oxygenate the water and then kind of just give them more nationalist look to the tank if you're going to fill up their water almost to the top like I did here it's not required but they'll use the space so why not right then make sure you use a lid because they have been known to escape so this will keep them contained it's up to you whether you use the light in here or not they prefer it to be a little dimmer to be honest so I would recommend I guess if you didn't care either way just don't use it but if you really do want to use the light you can they will acclimate and get used to the day and night cycle and they will use their caves if needed so if you use a light make sure you offer them cave so that they can go into the darkness when they feel like it I personally don't use it because there's enough natural light coming in in the nearby window and I don't want it to be too bright for him feeding your axolotl is pretty easy because you have several different options feed them once a day either sinking pellets I use the alexa waddles brand you can also give them a complete diet by feeding them earthworms or cut up pieces of night crawlers and for baby axel levels you can give them either very small earth rooms or live black worms I also recommend giving them a bit of variety and offering them treats like frozen blood rooms or frozen brine shrimp axolotls are pretty solitary animals in the wild so although you can house them together as adults babies are prone to fin mappings so it's best to keep babies separate make sure to get your ex a while from a reputable breeder or a reptile show or a reptile specialty store and do a little look over on the axolotl before you take it home make sure it's of a proper weight and it looks healthy the sign of a healthy plump axolotl is a natural aloe that has the same width of its head as the width of its belly but that's all there is to it they're really Hardy pets they'll follow you around begging for food they're fun animals to keep so things to keep in mind too would be to of course feed them once a day change out their cartridge and their filter or swap out the puritan depending on which one you use once a month and also doing a 20% water change every other week well hopefully this video helped you out help answer some questions on setup and care for axolotls thanks for watching and we will see you next week [Music]

Channel: Snake Discovery

Views: 568,745

Keywords: axolotl, axoltyl, axolotls, larvae salamander, baby salamander, how to, care for, axolotl setup, diet, maintenance, animals, pets, amphibians, salamanders

Id: MZZ9pYYeB_4

Length: 7min 54sec (474 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 15 2017