Hello all,
So back in February, I ended up having to give up one of my axolotls because it was male and I had another female in the tank. Honestly, it was just the fact that the breeder had an adult rescue female that I kept the female instead of the male.
But when I got this rescue, she had just laid a clutch of eggs.
The breeder kept her for another day, waiting to make sure she laid all of her eggs. Well, on the way over to my place, Luna dropped another egg.
The breeder told me not to worry, just throw the egg into the tank and the adults would take care of it(also known as eat it.) So I put Luna in the tank with Mudkip and just forgot about the egg. The eggs take 14-21 days to hatch, so I really didn’t think much else about it.
Fast forward to 3 weeks later and my husband calls me over to the fish tank and asks, “What is that?” while pointing at the side of the tank. Low and behold, here’s a little baby… thing swimming around. It looked kind of like a tad pole. It didn’t take us long to realize that it was the baby lotl. My husband wanted us to just leave it be, but I didn’t want it to starve to death, cause that’s just cruel. So I ordered some brine shrimp online and made the agreement with my husband that if the brine shrimp arrived and the baby was still alive, we’d trap it and put it in a container.
Now, keep in mind… at that time we had like 6 cats in the house and 2 axolotls. My husband was not down with the idea of adding another pet to our family. And to an extent, I kind of understand. It must be hard to be married to an animal lover (me) HAHA
So the brine shrimp arrived and I set them all up to hatch, got my husbands help to trap the baby and we waited. I didn’t know what to do. At this point, the baby had gone something like four days without food. I honestly didn’t think it would survive. But he did. I messaged the breeder and asked her for advice. Since I had only ever had an adult Axolotl and had only had axolotls for 3 months at this point, I didn’t know if I should pass the baby off to her or what I should do. She told me to give it a try and explained it wasn’t that difficult.
And honestly, it wasn’t.
He needed 100% water changes every day. His brine shrimp needed 12-16 hours to hatch and he needed to be fed everyday. It was tedious, but not hard.
I would feed him, set up the next batch of brine shrimp, stick them in the warmest place in our house (which just so happened to be balanced on the edge of a baby wipe container on the floor in my bathroom next to the heater xD), and do the same thing over and over again.
Guys… little Chomper THRIVED.
He ate so much and grew so fast that by 3 months old he was eating worms and at least 4 times the size of his siblings.
I have pictures tracking his progress and it was unbelievable.
It was one of those situations that I’m just like… wait, is this really happening? What am I supposed to do with this tiny newborn animal? Well, I made it work.
He went from being this tiny little tad pole like creature to this massive 9 and a half inch beautiful Blue Gill Dirty Leucistic axolotl. And male. Definitely male LOL
It was certainly an experience, and most likely one that I will never have again. But take a look at that glow-up. He’s such a cutie.
He’s giving me a hell of a lot of trouble right now. For some reason he doesn’t want to eat. He’s gone 5 weeks without eating and for the last week he’s eating very very little.. so I don’t really know what’s going on.
If you have any questions, let me know 🙂
Bree
Bree Howland 