I've had my 'lotls for a few months - some questions

[Kairus]

Hey guys, I've had my axolotls for a few months now, and I have a few questions.

I have two axolotls, a wild type and a leucistic. I keep them in a 20 gallon long filtered by a SUNSUN HW-302B. I wired up 4 120mm PC fans that sit on a metal mesh screen. The tank sits around 70F with this set up,

1) Lately on the aquarium walls there's been a white stringy something. It moves with the water flow (even the output of the canister doesn't blow it away). It's kind of wavy. It takes a bit of force to remove from the glass. It grows in thick plots and pretty much will cover the entire wall so I don't think it's hydra. I've been removing it, but it tends to come back...

2) Food! I don't have anywhere I can set up a worm compost, I live on the 3rd floor of a condo in Florida, and while I have a large balcony, with the sun it would get way too hot for worms. Plus the SO isn't too happy about keeping worms. I've read people keep their axies on pelleted food and they're fine. I want to get a better pellet as the ones I have for them are too small, they seem to be able to smell them, but don't go crazy for them like they used to. How is the Hikari Sinking Carnivore pellets? 47% protein, 5% fat seems pretty good. Or would these be better?

3) Lighting! I've tried to do a lot of research on this topic, but I haven't really found anything helpful. Axolotls don't like light, they have no eyelids, so that's understandable. I haven't been lighting their tank, though I do have a CFL fixture above the tank I turn on when I want to work on the tank. Are there any colors of light that don't bother axolotls much? Red? Blue? I'd like to be able to see them at least.

4) Substrate! I had a large grain quartz sand in the tank and I didn't like how it was trapping food. My other tanks use play sand and blasting sand that are a fine grain and don't trap food. So I removed all the substrate. The tank is currently bare, what is something inexpensive I can put at the bottom? I've seen people do tile and that looks nice, but I don't have a tile cutting saw.

5) Temperature. I know every axolotl keeper doesn't have a chiller, so what are your actual temps like? I have four fans blowing over the surface and quite a lot of evaporation, I can't get the water much cooler than it is at 70F.

I have a 125 turtle tank and a 72 bow front cichlid tank, and these axolotls make more of a mess of their tank than the others do! I think having the tank bare bottom will help quite a bit in this, as they aren't able to get a lot of the pellets I've dropped in.

 

[EmbryH]

1: It's hard to say what this could be without having a picture. I've heard of tiny, harmless worms that will coat the walls of a tank, but I don't think that's it..

2: You're in the USA, so just go to Walmart and buy some canadian night crawlers from the sporting good department.

3: Red light has the lowest frequency, but I don't know how axolotls react to it.

4. Go to Home Depot and buy a bag of silica-based play sand. You can get a 50lb bag for $3, and it's awesome. A quick rinse and you're done; there are usually very few pebbles to weed out, plus the sand looks very nice and it's easy to maintain.

5: Freeze water bottles or Tupperware containers filled with treated water. I have a rotation of at LEAST 2 frozen bottles and 4 ice bricks at any point in time when it's warmer.


Axies are messy creatures! Sand actually has helped me maintain a clean tank. I noticed that when I kept my then-juvie on glass, I had to change her water almost every day >< Sand is much, much easier.

 

[linuxrulesusa]

The white things on the wall of your aquarium are probably planaria. Wipe them off with a paper towel. To get rid of them long term, it's a combination of things.

Run the lights less and potentially cut back on feeding, if you're seeing lots of uneaten food on the bottom after 30 minutes or so.

More importantly, up your water changes. Check for uneaten food breaking down in caves or leaves of plants or other crevices and siphon it out during your water change. I have to do 50% weekly water changes in my 22.5 g tank that has several 3-3.5" axolotls, otherwise the sand starts looking really dirty and crud accumulates around the hides/fake plants.