Hey guys, Heather here from Tye-Dyed Iguana and today we're gonna talk about how to take
care of an axolotl. Now the axolotl species name is Ambystoma mexicanum. These guys, they can get
pretty big. They can reach 7 to 14 inches long for their average size and these guys also
live a pretty long time too. They live about 10 to 15 years, so once you get one you will
have it for quite a while. Now axolotls originally come from Mexico and they can now be found in the
basin of Mexico. The ones you see in the pet trade though, they're mostly all a captive bred and so
you don't get many wild types anymore. So for these guys tank size, they need to be at least
10 gallons. A full-grown adult can happily live in a 10 gallon tank for its whole life, however
when you do get 2 or more axolotls living together you'll want to increase the size to
20 gallons or even larger as you start to add more axolotls to the tank. Now when you house
multiple axolotls together, you have to make sure that there are similar size to each other. If you
have a bigger axolotl in with a smaller one, the bigger one could try to eat the smaller
one. So, you just want to make sure that they're a similar size. And also make sure you keep lots
of different hiding places for your axolotl in the tank so that it kind of reduces their stress,
especially if they're housed together, that way they can hide from each other and they don't
get stressed out. Now for their substrates, these guys are fully aquatic, so you don't need any type
of land portion in the tank. As far as the gravel goes at the bottom of the tank, you'll either want
to use sand like we use here. Or if you want to use a type of rocky gravel, you want to make sure
the pieces of the gravel are larger than what the axolotl can fit in its mouth, because axolotls are known to
accidentally scoop up or suck up the gravel and they can actually die from that. It can impact
their digestive system and it's just not good, so. Either use sand or you could use no substrate at
all, you can use a bare bottom tank or just make sure that that gravel, the gravel pieces are way
too large for them to fit in their mouth. Now as far as water temperature goes, these guys prefer a
much cooler water temperature than usual. The water should have a temperature of about 65 degrees to 75
degrees Fahrenheit. If your water gets too warm, it can cause your axolotl to be stressed out, it
can lead to bacterial infections, and possibly it can kill them, so you want to make sure your
water stays cold. Now as far as what type of water to use, never use plain tap water for these guys,
it will kill them. Make sure you always treat the water that you're going to use if it's tap water.
Make sure you treat it with a water conditioner, that removes chlorine and chloramines, like these
two different kinds that we have here. We have Prime and we also have Aqua Plus. Now as far as
water filtration goes, some keepers they choose not to use a water filter at all, but if you do
that you have to change their water every other day to keep it nice and clean. We recommend for
filtration that you either use a sponge filter, a small internal filter, or a small hang on the
back filter with a low flow rate for these guys. Now if you do have a type of filtration system
in your tank, you only have to change about 10 to 20 percent of the water weekly, so there's a lot
less work than trying to clean it every other day with no filtration at all, so. Just make sure you
keep an eye on the filter media and change it as needed. So lighting isn't required for these guys.
If you do have live plants in your tank or if you just want to brighten it up and make it look nice,
you can use like aesthetic lights, you can use LEDs like we have here, just make sure that the
light doesn't put off a lot of heat, that way that your water doesn't get warmed up and it stresses
the axolotl out. All right and the last thing about these guys is their diet. Axolotl are carnivores.
You can feed them all sorts of stuff, you can feed them night crawlers, either whole or chopped up. You can
feed them blood worms, black worms, daphnia, brine shrimp, and you can even feed them some sinking
fish pellets. So, they can eat a whole bunch of stuff. So yeah, as you can see axolotls make
really great pets, they're not very hard to take care of it all and they're really fun to watch.