I really need a table in here, but until then, we are on the floor
so while ago I got my axolotl sent over by Amber's axolotls and
All th- almost all the supplies for the enclosure was sent over by aquarium co-op. Now right after doing the axolotl video
I was gonna do a video on the setup.
I don't know how to care for live plants and uh
I don't ehhh-
Basically, most of the stuff that isn't live is fine. Like the really nice light they sent over
Along with just the other stuff, which we can go over
But until then I went ahead and ordered some more plants did a bit more research
I just bought these myself because like it's my fault that I killed the others
Smells weird but basically today we will unbox
Whatever's in here, I got a couple more plants for the axolotl and something for Franklin the turtle
This box is a bit wet. That's a good sign bc they're aquatic plant. So here's our extremely wet
Invoice.
Here we are. How good. Get to this point in a second. I'll also get to this in a second
You may be able to guess what it is. And then this one is the one that I'm most excited about
So I think one of the issues with the plants that I selected is they really shouldn't be planted in sand
They're better for gravel, which usually use gravel with fish but axolotls
You don't want to use that you want to use sand or just a non loose substrate like repticarpet or whatever
So I went with sand with her
Which by the way, to her now
Well, I guess it always was but could tell before planting them in sand was part of the issue
So the one that I got here and it's gonna drip everywhere
It's fine whatever. So the nice thing about this one is it's pre planted in the wood. Wow. This is actually looks really cool
Wow, that's really neat actually. So this was pre planted in wood. It was a bit pricier
I think this was like $35
But I think it's worth it because one the wood really just adds a whole nother feature
But - they did the hardware before you you don't have to plant it yourself. It's already all good to go
Assuming the lighting and the water temperature and else is fine
But this is java fern which is right in this piece of wood. I don't know what kind of wood it is
But who cares. Wow, I feel like I'm outside amazing
So again aquarium Co-op didn't ask me to say anything but something I really appreciate is on their site
They have really nice breakdowns as to what you can actually select plants by and I selected by easy to care for
Which is much appreciated they have a little breakdown of each individual plant
as to basically what they need and how easy it is and what kind of lighting you can also
Sort the plant to buy how much light they need
There's really convenient stuff that I've never seen plant sites do but I guess I don't look at plant sites super often
So maybe others do it, there's been opposing opinions as to whether you should leave this
moss around the plant
Originally, I was told that you should take that moss off
But some people said to leave it on so I'm still not sure about that
You can note each other in the comments as to whether I should take that Moss off or not. And finally
this little packet
of duck weed
D U C K W E E D
Now I thought I'd go ahead and give you some
Overall general updates as to how it's been my first time keeping an aquatic amphibian
how it's gone, how it's grown, how the enclosure change, how the axolotls changed and
How your different tips helped me out over the past few weeks or maybe a few months by now
I dunno it's been a little while. First of all, the axolotl kind of just explode it in size. It started out quite small
I really didn't realize how much it had grown until I went back and watched the video where I unboxed it
It was already big enough to where I could start feeding at night crawlers when I got it
So that's what she's been on since then. She's enjoyed them, taken them with no issue
she's a lot more aware than I expected to I
This is gonna sound really ignorant
If I say something wrong about fish. When I usually when I think of fish
I don't think of an animal that's super aware of its surroundings or really what's going on. This- this could very easily be wrong
I feel like it probably is but when I expected to get the axolotl
I thought it would just kind of be oblivious to the outside world and ignore me
It just sees food drop down and it grabs it but it really seems to know maybe a bit of what's going on
If I go up to the enclosure, it'll follow me around and if I have food, she'll be ready
She'll come up to the top of the water and patiently wait for it. So yeah, there's just more
More consciousness than I expected
not that I
Expected them to be dumb or anything that I did but like I said, we already talked about the plants a lot
I've also noticed that algae has been growing quite a- quite a bit
This kind of annoys me. I don't think there's any danger to it
It's, I mean that's pretty natural overall with most animals, but I do have to wipe it off the glass every so often
So, I don't know maybe something isn't perfect in there
It does look pretty cool though, because they're just growing on the hides. So that just looks kind of cool
They get kind of fuzzy and like colorful so I don't mind that as long as it's not
Harming the axolotl at all. And the filter. I hate aqueon filters aqu-aqueon
Equion. Um, I don't know. I got the first one which is the one that I unbox in the original video
I set it up. It was working and like one grain of sand got in and it just stopped working
I tried to flush it out and everything
It just completely broke. Luckily. That was within the Amazon return period so I returned it got another same thing happened
I scrubbed it really hard and I got it working again and
Then something else happened where like the water level got a little too low and it made this horribly loud screeching sound
It was terrifying. I really don't like this filter. It stopped working so many times. I don't know if there's any better ones available
It's like at least once every couple weeks something happens
or I have to take it out and clean it or something and it's also kind of
Annoying because you want to keep that like healthy bacteria and everything on the filter
So that's annoying but something else a lot of you mentioned is to make sure that the flow of the filters isn't too strong so that
It doesn't stress the axolotl out
so what I've done is I put another filter. Just one of my clean turtle filters and I
Zip tied it on to the filter
so now there's a very
Steady flow where you can't even tell that it's coming out but there's still enough flow to where it can cycle through
But it's not like splashing down and everything. So that's worked
Well temperatures have been one of the hardest things
The hardest thing actually having an animal that wants water that's in like the 60 degree range in
The same rooms animals that need 90 to 100 to 140 degrees if you like her looking at the Savannah monitor
It's very hard to balance all that out because that room is definitely warmer. I consider bringing the axolotl into this room
Like maybe can be the little
Like office pet or studio pet or something since it is cooler in here
I was doing the frozen water bottles. They were just a pain though
I had to I was using like little tear parks (sub slave: ???) switch to out at a time multiple times a day and refreeze them
Both it worked somewhat well
But I wanted to kind of avoid investing in a full-on cooler
just because one they are a little bit pricier and
Two it is just kind of clunky and big
So I got some aquarium fans if somebody suggested and this had been working pretty well it got it down about 6 degrees
So I am comfortable using that now next thing lighting
aquarium co-op sent that super cool light which I really liked some you mentioned that it might be too bright for the axolotl and
It doesn't it still comes out when the light is on like it will happily eat and stuff and it does have lots of hiding
Places with those big hides. Well one big hide. It's about to out
It kind of did outgrew the other hide already so you can definitely get out of the light
But when I do turn the light off she is out more. So I move the light up
It's now attached to the top of the rack
So it's less direct and it seemed to had- it seemed to have a difference with it. I would like to keep that light on
Mostly because it helps the plants out also for just some cosmetic purposes for me
I'm not super concerned about it right now, though
If it is clearly bothered by it and doesn't come out with the light on
Then I could just turn that off or give it to another animal
But so far so good about that and then water testing
I didn't mention it in the original video, but I have a water testing kit that I've been using pretty frequently and
Surprisingly, it's been just about exact when I very first tested it. It was like I can't remember exactly
Something there was like a lot of ammonia or something
But I realized I got kind of into a nice groove and pattern with the water changes
I changed about like 15 percent of the water like every other day or so and that's been working quite well
There was one point a couple weeks ago where I think I'm not sure how it happened
There might have been like a worm that I didn't notice that she didn't eat or something
But something gross got in there and it caused worms - just like develop everywhere based on all the research I did
They're completely harmless, but they were super gros- and gross and they just like gave me the chills when I saw them
So I had to flush a bunch of tiny worm things out. I can't remember what they're called
But I got that under control. I cleaned it out pretty well made sure the sand was thoroughly like not filled with stuff
So, uh, that was a bit of a learning curve, but now the water is good. The temperature could be better, but it's pretty good
The axolotl seems to be doing good to me and the plants are yeah
We'll see how they go. I think that's it though
If you want more pictures and videos, I've this is only my second axolotl video, and I've only posted a couple pictures on Instagram
But you can follow it go_herping over there. And there we go. Are you interested in more axolotl content or ABS content?
I have very few amphibians which I still have to update you on a couple
New things that you haven't really seen. I know the background is still quite boring. We're working on it
It's-it's different every time. It'll look better soon
Thanks for watching. That's it