Axolotl Care Guide for Australia

The five things that actually matter

There is a lot of axolotl advice online and most of it is noise. In order of how often it kills animals, here is what matters.

1. Cycle the tank before the animal arrives. A new aquarium cannot process waste. It takes several weeks to build the bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate, and an axolotl put into an uncycled tank is sitting in its own ammonia. This is the single most common cause of death in a first axolotl and it is entirely preventable. Start cycling when you start shopping.

2. Keep the water cool. 16 to 18 degrees. This is the Australian problem. See the temperature section below.

3. Use fine sand or nothing. Axolotls feed by suction and will swallow whatever is near the food. Gravel causes impaction, which is usually fatal. Fine sand passes through. Bare glass is safest of all.

4. Baffle the filter. Axolotls come from still canals and hate current. A filter blasting across the tank will keep an animal pinned in a corner and stressed. Any filter is fine as long as you slow the outflow.

5. Give them a hide. A cave or pipe they can get right inside. An axolotl without somewhere to retreat is a more anxious animal.

The Australian temperature problem

Axolotls evolved in cool high altitude water. They want 16 to 18 degrees, tolerate up to about 20 comfortably, become stressed above 22 and become genuinely ill above 24. Sustained heat is the leading cause of axolotl illness in this country.

What that means practically depends on where you live. In Melbourne and much of Adelaide, a tank in a cool interior room with a fan across the surface will hold range most of the year. In Brisbane and Perth, an aquarium chiller is close to essential. Sydney sits in between and depends on your house.

Three tools, cheapest first. Placement, meaning the coolest interior room away from afternoon sun, which costs nothing and is the most effective single change. A fan blowing across the water surface, which drops temperature two to four degrees through evaporation for the price of a desk fan. And an aquarium chiller at $300 to $600, AUD which simply solves it.

Frozen bottles of water rotated through the tank work for a short heat spike but not as a season long strategy, and they cause swings that are themselves stressful.

Handling, and why you should not

An axolotl's skeleton is largely cartilage and its skin is a thin permeable layer with no scales. They are not built to be picked up. Move them with a soft net or wet hands when you have to, and otherwise leave them in the water. This is an animal to watch, not to hold.

Reading your axolotl

A healthy axolotl has full forward facing gill stalks with plenty of filament, a body as wide as its head, and sits calmly on the bottom. Warning signs are worth learning:

• Gills shrinking or curling forward usually means poor water quality or too much flow.
• Floating persistently can be trapped gas after a large meal, or a sign of stress. Occasional floating is normal, constant floating is not.
• A curled or tucked tail tip is a stress posture.
• Refusing food for several days in an animal that was eating well means check the water first, temperature included.
• Pale patches or fuzzy growth needs attention quickly.

In almost every case the first thing to check is the water, and the second is the temperature. Both are testable. Guessing is not a strategy.

Living together

Axolotls are not social and do not need company. Two can live together once both are over 12 cm and a similar size, with enough floor space and two hides. Below that size they will nip each other's gills and limbs. They regenerate, but it is stressful and avoidable. Never keep them with fish, which either nip the gills or get eaten.

Read next

These three guides cover the detail. Read the tank setup one before you order anything.