Axolotls have come to attention after being declared endangered species. It is related to the tiger salamander. Also commonly called walking fish. Because of the high birth rate, many pet owners have to raise the babies and are always anxious to know what to feed juvenile axolotl.
What to feed baby Axolotl? Baby axolotls can detect moving objects easily, meaning live food jiggling is easily grabbed. Being very small themselves, their live food has to be in very small size to fit their mouths. The best options are newly hatched baby brine shrimp, microworms, live-cultured daphnia, and cut blackworms.
What to feed baby Axolotl – What to feed baby axolotl in their infancy
In this blog, we discuss mostly baby axolotls, what to feed baby axolotl, baby axolotl food, and baby axolotl care. Read on and enjoy.
How Do You Feed A Baby Axolotl?
Besides what to feed baby axolotl, the how-to feed a baby axolotl is also important. The newly hatched baby axolotls will see only moving or wiggling food dropped in front of their mouth. For this reason, they are only fed live food.
As the baby axolotls will only see moving or wiggling feed, for feeding them, their tank should be shallow and not very big. They will not swim to the food dropped in the tank.
The morsels have to be presented close to their mouth, for them to suck in. This is done by tweezers or turkey baster and the food in small pieces is offered in front of their mouth with little wiggling.
Clean the leftover food soon after the feeding, as it will foul the water, which can be dangerous for the health of the baby axolotl.
How Often To Feed Baby Axolotl?
After what to feed baby axolotl question, comes the query how often to feed baby axolotl. As baby axolotls are growing, the proper amount of feed and at right time is important for their healthy growth.
It is observed that from the same batch of hatchlings, some baby axolotls will grow healthy while some will have stunted growth.
Disease apart, this is because the healthy axolotls had a good feed while the others did not have a proper feed.
A general ruler followed by most of the pet owners and breeders is to feed the baby axolotls for two minutes per feed session. This is called the two-minute rule. Some prefer to extend the feed time to five minutes per session.
Axolotl specialists and breeders agree that the baby axolotls should be fed once or maximum twice a day only, with the two-minute feed rule.
This is for all kinds of feed be it the freshly hatched baby brine shrimps, live-cultured daphnia, microworms, or the chopped-up blackworms.
Overfeeding is dangerous as obesity will cause many other health problems.
Important thing is to clean up the leftover food after the feed session, as it will foul the tank water quickly with bacteria and other toxic chemicals, which is very unhealthy for the baby axolotl.
People also ask how often to feed juvenile axolotl? As the juvenile stage is a growth stage, the juvenile axolotl should be fed at least once a day.
What To Feed Baby Axolotls?
What do baby axolotls eat or what to feed baby axolotl is an important query asked by many pet owners, as they want to be sure they are feeding the right diet to their loved ones.
Feeding newly hatched axolotls starts only after 24 to 72 hours, as the fresh hatchlings eat their own yolk sac from their embryos.
Since they are growing they need a lot of proteins. The best foods considered for the baby axolotls till they are about 2 cm in length are the following.
Always assure that the feed is in small pieces which can be easily swallowed by the baby axolotl easily. As they grow in size adjust their feed to match their size and hunger.
How Do You Take Care Of A Baby Axolotl?
In addition to what to feed baby axolotl, there are some other important tasks required to give proper care to your loved baby axolotl.
The general care for raising baby axolotls is not very demanding. For the first few months, the baby axolotl needs some special favors.
They are very sensitive to the water temperature, water quality, and oxygen content in water and live food. Highlighted below are the main care requirements for a healthy baby axolotl.
Tank
During the larvae stage, they don’t need a very large tank. Segregate the babies into small shallow glass or plastic containers (a few in each). This way it is easy to feed them and change water easily.
Aeration
During the early stages, the oxygen content in water should be kept high either by use of a bubbler or frequent changes with fresh water at the right temperature.
The larvae breathe through the skin (cutaneously) till their gill start functioning fully. This is about three weeks’ time.
Besides the oxygen level, the water chemistry must be favorable for the baby axolotl. It must be free of chlorine and other chemicals and its pH should be basic i.e. 7.4 to 7.6.
Feed
The baby larvae will only eat live feed like newly hatched baby brine shrimp (BBS), cultured daphnia, microworms, and chopped blackworms.
Each baby axolotl can have a different appetite and likeness for food. Try all types, so all babies have an equal chance to grow.
Separation
When they grow their front legs at around two weeks (about 2 cm long), the baby axolotls develop cannibalistic behaviors. They will nip their tank mates’ limbs for food.
When people put up a question like what to feed baby axolotl? The simple answer is baby axolotl will eat anything that wiggles in front of it.
This is just a natural response to feed themselves. They will feed on live organisms, which move in their vicinity.
Baby axolotls will eat shrimp eggs if fed them. However, specialists advise this is dangerous and can be fatal for the axies.
As the baby axolotl is very small at just about three-quarters of an inch long, it will need very small bits of food, is very sensitive to the feed quality, and is easily killed by bacteria and germs.
The unhatched brine shrimp eggs are sold as cysts. Some pet owners hatch these cysts to get the baby brine shrimps, to avoid the disease and bacteria from commercial production.
During live feeding at home, some eggs or unhatched baby brine shrimps will be digested by the baby axolotls but this is ok.
However if there are many unhatched eggs (cysts) or eggshells, these can choke or produce impaction in the baby axolotl and kill it.
How Do Baby Axolotls Feed Brine Shrimp?
While asking what to feed baby axolotl people also query how to feed brine shrimp to baby axolotls. First, it must be remembered the baby axolotls will eat only live food.
Being minute in size themselves, they will eat only live baby brine shrimp (BBS) also known as Artemia. The Brine shrimp is entirely a different thing. It is about 10 mm in length, which is about the size of the baby axolotl itself.
Brine shrimp is a feed for the adult axolotl. It is frozen for storage and transportation.
Can Baby Axolotls Eat Frozen Brine Shrimp?
Feeding baby axolotls brine shrimp which is freshly hatched is somewhat expensive and cumbersome, most of the pet owners buy commercially produced frozen BBS and keep frozen. Hence the question can baby axolotls eat frozen brine shrimp?
Frozen brine shrimps are not baby brine shrimp. It is a feed for an adult axolotl. As such cannot be given to a baby axie. Further, it is not live and the chunk size would be big for the baby axolotl to gulp down.
The adult brine shrimp are approximately 8 to 10 mm long. Whereas the baby brine shrimp is just 0.4 mm big. The latter is known as nauplii and carries the nutritional value of the egg sac of a 24 hour hatched shrimp egg.
How To Feed Baby Axolotls Bloodworms?
When it comes to what to feed a baby axolotl, pet owners ask if bloodworms can be fed, and how to feed baby axolotls bloodworms.
Specialists agree that live microworms and blood worms are not a very nutritious feed for the growing baby axolotls. It should not be used as a staple diet.
As the axolotl baby grows, it will develop the front legs first. At this stage, it will be more mobile and will hunt for its food in the tank.
This is the right time to introduce the baby axolotl to other feeds like frozen bloodworms and other frozen food and soft pellets.
As to how much feed is to be given, use the two-minute rule (or five-minute rule).
Feed the baby axolotls bloodworms for a short period. On average it should not be more than three bloodworms in a week. Adjust the bloodworm feed depending on the baby axolotl size and the bloodworm length.
Remembered that all baby axolotls will not like all the types of live feed. Some will have a preference for one type of worms while others will prefer another type of feed.
You must assure that the baby eats a variety of worms, to balance its feed mix for healthy growth.
It is commonly observed that those babies, who do not eat a well-balanced diet have retarded growth.
How Long Can Baby Axolotls Go Without Food?
With the question of what to feed baby axolotl, pet enthusiasts also ask how long the baby axolotl can go without food.
Baby axolotls can survive without food for about a few days only as compared to adult axolotls, which can easily live more than three weeks without food. However, the habitat water temperature should be cold, about 60°F (15.5°C).
What Are Baby Axolotls Called?
Baby axolotls are technically a larva stage. They are just hatched and in a stage of development to the juvenile stage. Their feed and habitat requirements are somewhat different from the adult axolotls.
In about 2 weeks they reach the 2-centimeter length and develop front arms.
What to feed a baby axolotl is an important question for pet owners, as just after hatching and few weeks of age, the baby axolotls are very sensitive to their food and habitat requirements.
Although their care is simple relative to other pets, only thing is to control their water quality and temperature and give them the right feed twice a day.
What to feed baby Axolotl
Their feed comprises of live food (protein) only as by nature they will grasp for any moving or wiggling thing, thinking it as their food.
Their feed during the few weeks of the baby stage comprises only freshly hatched baby brine shrimps, live-cultured daphnia, microworms, blackworms (minute pieces), mealworms, mosquito larvae, and underwater bugs.
Their feed easily messes up the water in the tank, and also baby axolotl dirty their water quickly, the water has to be replaced often, for them to breathe easily.
At two weeks stage when they grow their front arms, they develop cannibalistic habits and have to be segregated by size, to decrease the cases of nibbling limbs and small axolotls being eaten up.
Welcome to Learn About Pet. My name is Rajkumar Ravichandran and I love all pets, travel, and amazing food. I write about my passion and personal experience caring for multiple pets in this blog! ❤️
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