(funky music)
- So almost exactly one year and one month ago
I got my first aquatic amphibian.
Actually my first exotic amphibian,
'cause before then I had just been keeping
native species to the area.
And so this is my axolotl, that you might have seen
some videos on.
I think I've done two on her.
I did one unboxing, where I was super nervous
because this is a very intimidating animal for me to get.
Not because they're a scary species
or because they're super complicated.
Because this was completely new territory for me
and something I had never cared for.
I'm all about the terrestrial reptiles
and this was a whole new ball park.
So I was excited, but I was super nervous,
I think understandably.
So I got her from Amber at Amber's Axolotls on Instagram.
She's not currently selling, but I think she's going
to later this year.
So just don't spam her with messages
asking if she's selling.
But she shipped would be Woobeewoo,
which is the name of my axolotl.
'Cause Woobee, Woobeewoo, from the town of Woobeewoos.
People either love or hate the name,
and I adore it.
But Woobeewoo was shipped from Illinois to North Carolina
in March, and I got her as this really young,
very different-looking axolotl.
A lot of people are probably gonna think
I did a little, swishitty switch out,
like if she died or something.
But if I had faked it and switched to a new one,
I would have matched him up a little bit better.
So they just changed a lot with color,
which I didn't realize how much they would do.
But thankfully I really like how the adult version
of her looks.
She started this as kind of lightly colored
with a little bit of pinkish, and she was super tiny.
I think I have the baby picture where she was like
straight out of the egg.
I got her when she was like a few inches long.
'Cause you, I guess you wanna wait to make sure
they're healthy and large enough to ship.
And then she was shipped to me
and she has grown a ton over the year.
I'm pretty sure she's done growing now,
she's been the same size for a number of months.
So she grew pretty fast to full size,
maybe in like eight months or so.
But yeah, so I unboxed her in March.
That was actually my first time unboxing an animal too.
We've shipped out like a hundred I think over 100 animals
now, but I've only had one actually delivered to me.
So that was exciting.
I got to unbox her and everything.
And there were a lot of things that happened
throughout keeping this animal,
that were just complicated and kind of stressful.
So you might think that the most difficult animal
for me to keep has been my savannah monitor,
but she is second to last on the list,
because Woobeewoo gets first on the list.
This has been the most difficult experience,
and the most tiring.
I don't regret getting her.
I'm still really glad.
And I wouldn't mind a couple more,
maybe in the future, who knows.
So axolotls if you don't know, they're basically
a salamander tadpole that never actually transforms
into a salamander.
They're from somewhere in Mexico.
I think they're actually extinct in the wild.
I don't know anything about their origin,
or their history or their natural life.
I just know how to keep mine alive.
This is also not a care guide,
'cause I'm not taking my liability for that.
There are quite a few changes that you might even
be able to tell just from looking
at the enclosure.
The first is that there is no sand.
'Cause the first problem I ran into was ammonia.
I got one of those kits, one of the water testing kits.
You can also just buy like strips,
but I thought I'd be fancy buy the whole little tubes
and bottles and everything.
I don't know why people say I'm not a licensed scientist,
'cause I have a water kit.
What else do you need?
And so it was pretty decent at the start,
like not too bad.
The levels are a little bit off.
But they just kept worsening.
I was kind of hoping that as it kinda cycled more
that it would get better,
which cycling is kind of a big part
of my original issue here.
Is I did about a months prep for this animal,
like reading care guides and stuff.
Which to a lot of people is like barely anything.
To others that's way more than you need to do.
I felt comfortable at the amount
that I looked into, but I probably coulda used
a little bit more 'cause I didn't entirely understand
just how long cycling an enclosure would be.
So when I got Woobeewoo into the enclosure
the levels looked perfect,
since she hadn't started producing any waste or anything,
but it probably wasn't fully cycled properly.
I was using this really lame filter
that actually broke within like a couple weeks.
I can't remember what it's called.
I've used a couple more of them and I hate them.
I don't recommend them.
They suck.
I got it on Amazon, just don't.
I have a kit below with all the supplies
that I used in the updated filter,
which is another change I made but I'll get to.
But yeah, basically the filter wasn't really working
and then ended up just breaking out of nowhere.
The enclosure was like partially cycled
and Woobeewoo who started producing waste.
I was feeding her just as usual,
cutting up little night crawlers.
And she was loving them, but she was pooping quite a bit.
I didn't have a this, what's it called?
I didn't have a siphon like the very first day.
I ordered it like the day I got her.
So I had was siphon-less for a couple days,
so I was kind of just scooping it out.
Luckily the poop stays in these little packets
as long as you don't break'em open.
I guess like most and amphibian poop,
like the toads, it's really easy to just clean it.
'Cause it's like a little poop sausage,
but if you break it it's like a poop pinata,
it's everywhere.
So that would occasionally happen and that just made
the ammonia worse.
So there's this video that really helped me
from Aquarium Co-op on explaining nitrate, nitrate,
and ammonia, and they were actually the people that sent me
almost all the supplies for this enclosure,
including that really fancy light.
But unfortunately I dropped in the water
because it wasn't attached well enough.
Thankfully nothing was electrocuted,
but half the light broke.
So I'll just count my blessings on that.
Who cares you can still see.
They have a really good video explaining the differences
so you can understand it,
and I won't go into that.
But I was having the ammonia problem
and I was trying all sorts of things
and eventually the thing that worked the best,
was just removing all the sand.
So I preferred it with sand.
I think it looks worse without.
I can live without it.
I've learned to like it a bit,
and that's really helped because it's been
easier to keep it clean, and spot cleaning
is not as hard 'cause I would literally
have to take out chunks of sand and wash
it in the sink.
Which was a pain and it probably kind of ruin the cycle
a little bit.
I just took the sand out, and it's much better.
So I had ammonia problems all throughout the year,
still occasionally it will spike.
The problem is she poops always under the hide,
so if I try to siphon it from the hide,
the siphon can't fit under there.
If I lift the hide everything just goes everywhere.
Not just poop, but detritus.
Detritus is the scariest thing I've ever seen.
I didn't know what these were called originally.
It was these little white worms that appear
when there is waste.
They just kind of come and start eating it,
and they breed on it and they keep breeding
and keep breeding, and they just explode in quantity.
It's horrifying.
I literally just got chills just thinking about them.
They're not harmful.
They can't do anything to the axolotl.
They can't do anything to you.
They just exist, and I hate it.
People were just saying like don't worry,
it'll go away as you clean the poop
out and as you get everything situated.
You don't have to like take them out manually.
They'll start disappearing.
I just I couldn't sleep at night knowing
there was these these worms, these parasite looking things
in my reptile room.
So I was just on mission kill detritus
and they sucked.
So like who cares about the axolotl being healthy,
I just need detritus to get out.
But so basically my point in saying that is occasionally
there's still a spike.
It's extra clean right now 'cause I cleaned it literally
a few minutes ago before this.
I siphoned it and did a pretty decent water change.
Right now I usually do about a 50% water change twice
a week, which is kind of a lot.
Some people do I think like a 10% change per day,
some of you like a 25% change per week.
I'm look, I'm on my routine.
It's probably not the routine you should be doing,
but I'm just basing this on the health of my animal.
And thankfully, speaking of the health,
I don't think she's ever had any ammonia burns at all.
Apparently that's pretty common to deal with.
Maybe maybe I'm overlooking it, but I don't see anything.
The only physical damage she's had,
is she had an old hide in here.
It looked super cool, I really liked it,
but it ended up, it was cheap and ended up
chipping on the inside,
so when she came out it gashed her tail open.
Axolotls are known to regenerate,
basically any part of their body,
like their legs.
Just pop it off, it'll grow back.
Don't pop your axolotls legs off.
But if you do, it'll grow back.
So she kind of took a whole chunk out of her tail.
That's a gross visual.
Actually I have pictures so you get all the gross visuals.
It's really not that bad though.
It was just this like thing in there.
That happened a number of months ago,
sometime last year.
You really can't even see it.
You have to look for it, and you can kind of see
the spot it was there,
but I healed up super well and super quickly.
So I changed out the hide, and that's the only physical
issue she's had.
Now the filter has been another interesting thing.
Like I said I hated that first filter I got.
It sucked.
I got this other filter that I don't know the name
of, but I'll link it also below.
Buy it on Amazon,
I get commissions when you buy stuff on Amazon.
And this new filter has been doing quite well.
I guess it's a sponge filter.
I know they're, like I have a canister filter
from my turtle Franklin, and then we have
a few of their just like plain boring filters
for a couple other turtles.
And so she had one of those,
but now she has this sponge one,
and it definitely works better,
and it doesn't break after two weeks of use.
Yeah.
It wasn't cycled though.
She's never really had a fully cycled enclosure
'cause the stupid filters kept breaking,
and I was trying to save the filters,
the filter cartridges, but it wasn't really working,
and I couldn't use the cartridge in this.
So I'm not very good at cycling and I didn't really do it.
But thankfully she hasn't seemed to have been impacted
at all, and she's grown very well.
No ammonia problems on her physical body,
just in the water, and no visible stress that I've seen.
Now I have the filter off right now
because it would drive us insane if you could hear
it while I was filming.
It does cause a bit of a flow, and people
were really angry in the first video
'cause they were like, the flow is going to stress
it out and stress is going to kill your axolotl.
It's true that stress will kill your axolotl,
but she didn't, does not seem bothered by it.
It's pretty easy to tell when a axolotl stressed.
Their little head worms will basically curl inwards,
or curl outward.
They'll curl some direction.
But hers don't curl either direction,
and they never have.
I think the one time it did was kind of near the start,
the start of summer when it was really hot,
where her enclosure was sometimes reaching 75 degrees.
I believe 74 is when heat stress is most common,
and ideally you'll be in the 60s.
Right now it's a crisp 61 in here,
in her enclosure 'cause I have this fan,
which is also off cause it's really loud and annoying.
I hate it, but it does the job.
'Cause originally I had to use frozen water bottles
and I would switch them out twice a day
just to keep the water temperatures down.
Thankfully this fan works well,
so the only time she ever showed any signs of stress
was when the temperatures were way too high.
I fixed that and she's been good ever since.
The flow from the filter is not something
she's ever had a reaction to.
I tried to decrease it, I had stuffed paper towel
and rags and stuff in it, but it was just making stuff gross
and it was getting clogged up.
'Cause the water level drops really fast
because the fan is on it, and because the filters running.
So the more space there is between the filter and the water,
the more flow there is.
And it's hard to keep this topped off
because you don't want to just top the enclosure off.
I think Aquarium Cup did a video on that too.
That whether it's an aquarium for fish or an axolotl,
why topping it off is dangerous.
So you don't want to do that, you wanna actually do changes.
So basically it the level does drop
and the flow gets stronger.
And I don't mind the flow because Woobeewoo
does not mind the flow.
Her diet that's been super easy.
She eats a full nightcrawler,
about she eats like four nightcrawlers
a week or something.
Like just full size.
I used to cut'em up, but she just eats
the whole thing whole.
I stopped cutting them up because they would get
kinda of bloody and dirty the water up.
I was kind of concerned she would like,
she can't choke on it, but I don't know,
she'd be uncomfortable.
But she just scarfs them down no problem.
Three to four night collars a week has kept her
at this perfect health, even though most things
say like feed her daily.
And then as a baby she was eating
half of a nightcrawler every other day or so.
So plants is another thing.
This enclosure looks pretty underwhelming overall.
There's two plants in it and hide, and an axolotl.
The plants that I have in here now are doing quite well.
They're not in sand.
One is literally just floating around.
It's just one being closure it just floats back and forth.
And it does fine.
And then this other one that I also got from aquarium Co-op
it's on a piece of wood.
So it stays in place.
And that one's doing really well.
That one costed me like $30.00, so I'm glad it's doing well.
And then the hide is covered in algae.
This entire enclosure will get covered in algae.
I don't believe algae is dangerous
in any way for axolotls.
I know they aren't for turtles.
They can just grow on your turtle and you can scrape it off,
but I like to leave that because it looks kinda cool.
And but the hide is also covered in the algae.
I used to scrape it all off now I just don't care.
I got used to the look.
I do scrape it off the glass primarily,
so 'cause it looks good in videos,
but also because I don't want to see algae myself
all the time because it makes it look very ignored
and very lame when there's algae everywhere.
There's still some on the corners
'cause I can't get that off the rubber as easily.
But that's fine.
So algae's growing.
I'm sure that's partially because of the lighting on top.
I have had the lighting off before,
'cause that's something else people say stresses her out.
She's not stressed out by the lighting.
I can see where some axolotls levels might be.
Mine has had light in from the first day
and I've turned it off at different points
to see how she changes.
And at first she would hide less when the light was off,
but now it's completely indifferent
whether the lights on and off.
Or on or off.
So it helps the plants.
It promotes algae growth.
It looks cool.
She doesn't mind it.
I leave the light on.
I don't care what you have to say.
You might be able to tell, over the past year
I've become a bit more stubborn about the care.
Because at first I was like changing everything.
Like if there was a suggestion
I would jump on it, I'd fix it,
I'd do it.
But then I was just changing stuff like everyday
and nothing was the same.
'Cause everyone was saying something different.
So now that I know what keeps her happy and healthy,
I'm pretty firm on the husbandry.
Again this is not a care guide,
'cause maybe this does not apply for all axolotls.
But for my own, I figured out
what keeps her alive and healthy.
So I've just got to be a bit more strict
on listening an axolotl advice.
And I usually have to, I just reach out myself
to trusted axolotl keepers,
instead of reliant on the comment section.
Woobeewoo herself, I didn't even really talk about her.
I just talked about the enclosure.
She's such a cool animal.
She's so big I wish you could do stuff with her,
like handler or something.
I don't know, I guess you can't.
I've put my hand in there and I've touched her feet.
They feel so weird.
They're such a weird animal and it's really cool.
So I'm really glad I have an axolotl.
I'm glad that she's doing well.
I really like how she looks.
She is just a wild-type morph.
I think they're still called morphs and axolotls.
If I ever got another one I would love like the white,
I think it's, what's it called?
Is it just on mine now?
Whatever that one is, that's my kind of second favorite.
But I love the wild type looking.
She looked even cooler on the white sand,
but I don't mind her just like this.
Everything about her is so unhuman-like.
It's like we have very few similarities.
We both have eyes and we both have four appendages,
but other than that we're different colors from them.
They have those weird alien thingies,
they have the odd fish looking tails,
they have the weirdest like sideways fish face.
I just like having animals that are as far
from us as possible.
Kind of like how snakes are.
It makes it more interesting.
But it's it's just crazy that you can own an animal
that's this bizarre.
And I'm glad that they don't turn into salamanders
'cause salamanders are kind of lame compared to them.
Aquatic is a pain.
I was stressed out at first
'cause this was on a different shelf.
It's now on this like industrial heavy-duty shelf.
But it was on kind of other one,
and I was like that's a lot of water.
That's like a lot of pounds of water.
You cannot move this enclosure a single inch
when it's filled.
You have to drain in at least like 75%
just for two people to move it off the thing.
Maybe everyone I know is just really weak,
but we can't do it.
But a 20 feels like a nice size for her.
She moves around quite a bit.
She looks dead.
She convinces me that she's just deceased,
five times a day 'cause she just floats everywhere.
She's not at the top or anything.
I think floating at the top of the enclosure
is also a bad sign.
But she'll just float anywhere,
like in the middle.
She just exists like she's in space.
So yeah, my axolotl's not dead.
That's her update.
What do you think of the species?
Do you wanna see me with more aquatic amphibians?
I don't right now.
Like if you do then sorry, I don't think I'm gonna get
anything else at the moment,
other than maybe another axolotl at some point.
I used to want some newts, but that kind of wore off.
I just want more aquatic turtles, I guess.
Turtles are cooler.
But that's Woobeewoo, my axolotl.
Cared for her for 13 months, she's still alive.
Oh yeah.
I set really high standards for myself,
don't kill it.
Like I said, all the supplies I uses in the description.
You can check out the other videos I did on her,
and that's her 13 month update.
So I'm Alex and thanks for watching.
[gentle music]