My axolotl breeding and growing out

[discus rookie]

My axolotl have spawned and their eggs have been removed to a cooler.

This is them after they have hatched. I added a sponge filter inside, and some snails to suck up the dirts. I have placed a bag of crushed coral in there, plus I have added minerals in the water to increase hardness for better growth.

This is them in a glass dish. I have culled two because they appeared to have a deformed spine.

More pictures of them. I placed them in glass containers and BPA free food safe plastic containers.


papa and mama axolotl


micro worms culture--in Omgea One fish flakes with bread, yeast, and oakmeal

live brine shrimp

more pic of papa

and papa and mama together

[discus rookie]

I performed daily water change and wipe down on each container.
Water was sucked out with a turkey blaster here.

These are the cute little guys sitting in very little bit of water. We do this in the bathroom and the aging water barrel is sitting next to the containers so they only need to stay like this for may be a few seconds and they are completely fine. 100% daily water change is done to keep the water clean and the larvae healthy.


Water is being introduced from the aging water bucket into the container.

This is a size comparison. They look orange because they eat lots of live baby brine shrimps.


This is mama axolotl.

This is papa.

[discus rookie]

This is them in their containers. At this stage they were still very tiny.

[discus rookie]

Breeding albino and wild have produced leutistic and wild offsprings, no albino at all.
I was trying to wean them to eat Hikari frozen bloodworms. At this stage, I was feeding them live baby brine shrimps, live daphnia, live white worms, and frozen bloodworm.

They are supposed to be white, the orange tint comes from eating live baby brine shrimps.

This little guy just jumped up to eat a piece of daphnia.

This is a greedy little bugger, he has got two worms!


Another guy who has two in his mouth! You can see the live white worm next to the blood worm in the picture.

This guy has caught a white worm.

[discus rookie]

At this stage, they had their front arms and toes, also, they were starting to have legs slowly coming out.

For size comparison, I have placed my camera cover next to them.

You can see that the back legs are starting to come out in this little guy.

Another angle of the tiny back legs.

A close up on the long gills.

This one has no back legs yet.

A wild one.

This one has a piece of pellet sitting on his head, he is getting very tiny short back legs coming out as you can see.

[discus rookie]

Now, they were completely off live food and were eating frozen bloodworms, frozen krills, and pellets. I have placed them together in a 45 gallon with a XP3 and a Fluval C4 HOB. These guys do not like currents so I had the spray bar pointing to the back wall.

[chaoslite]

I think those are totally cool. Nice photos.

Mishka

[niqhil]

wow.. I was expecting some discus strain !
( I accept . I do not know enough about either )

[discus rookie]

Now, they are 2.5"



Axolotl is a water creature (cannot live without water) originally from Mexico. It is pretty much extinct in nature and is on the endangered list. I believe a pretty expensive permit is required to import them. They are very interesting as they live in cold water (can even survive in a fridge) and can regenerate their limbs.

The 6 "horns" on top of their heads are their gills. They can also breath through a "lung" so filter is optional. They do not like current, are very easy and hardy once they are mature and can live for many years. A fully grown one is not too big, you can house 2 adults in a 25 gallon.

This is my first time breeding them. Luckily, I have not had any sickness or death. They are all eating like pigs.

Thanks for reading.

[Rudustin]

Fascinating!

[Argentum]

Amazing animal. I love the albino. cant like the black though

[trungnguyen]

It is very nice and interesting. The papa looks like the black dragon in "How to train your dragon" cartoon movie.

[discus rookie]

The mom is albino (white with pink eyes) but the children who are white all have black eyes (leutistic).
The mom (with pink eyes) has very poor eye sight.
Some children told me they think the leutistic looks like pokemon.
The wild black type is popular among those who want to create a biotope that looks like their real habitat. We have a few of the wild black type in our local aquarium.
My 6 yrs old daughter is scared of the wild type, but she likes the white.
Thanks for reading my thread.

[rickztahone]

Thanks for sharing such fascinating creatures with us.

[Elliots]

Just curious, how old are they in the various photos? I have no ides how fast they grow. I knew what they were from reading "MAD" magazine in the late fifties and early sixties. The word Axolotol often appearted in many places in the magazine because it was a funny word or the writers liked it.