Some pictures of my Axolotls

[Kiwi303]

I thought I'd pop this here rather than on the intro thread anyone interested in axolotls will soon find it here anyway, so the intro can stay an intro and this can hold the pics

The wild type, you can see the small gill branches, with a developing fringe once more.

The colour balance is a bit off on this pic, you can barely make out the darker wild type on the bottom right, and the Leutistic one one is mostly hidden behind the stick-on thermometer. You can see the air powered filter and in the background the 200W heater element I have set at 10*C.

the leutistic one, She (I think, it's fatter than the other and has a smoother ****) wouldn't co-operate with a through-the-glass shot so here she is floating near the top of the tank drifting above the bubbler output.

She still just has 3 small little nubs of gill branches with little small nubbins that hopefully will grow into proper frills. She has a foot regenerating, so that may be sapping her energy away from her gill replenishment.

 

[tonimeloni]

i cant see the picture

 

[Kiwi303]

Does refreshing the page help? they're straight [*img] tag crops from the lines provided under the galery pics. maybe if you click the little "3" next to "gallery images" under my username/location flag bit and go straight to the gallery?

Caudata.org - Member Galleries - Photos Posted By Kiwi303

 

[Shizeric]

Post some more pics of your entire tank, I think you would benefit greatly from feedback from users of this forum, my initial response is a suggestion to replace your substrate.

 

[Kiwi303]

I've uploaded some more pics, Two of my tank, and three of the leutistic axy as per requests.

Caudata.org - Member Galleries - Photos Posted By Kiwi303

Shizeric, I've been thinking about that following reading on here and axolotl.org and various other places about just what an axolotl can manage to choke down, but I think I'll wait until I do other things to the tank and do it all in one lump. I'm thinking about replacing the bottom with flat tile and a few river rocks, with some potted live water plants in the piles of rock. A couple of lengths of round terracotta tile drain from the landscaping centre for hides, and a corner Mattenfilter using a water pump and spray bar replacing the air pump powered canister filter.

Previously they didn't have hides, and they lived in the lounge of the previous owner, with windows on 3 walls of the room. Currently as a stop gap measure they have a spray painted, silver, plastic coke bottle, and a similarly painted plastic Meths bottle. Both washed out prior to being painted of course But I decided to leave the "poison" moulded into the side of the meths bottle up Maybe I'll paint the next hides as toxic waste barrels

 

[Kiwi303]

Well heres an update, I've got a new filter and filled it with ceramic media, let that sit in the tank running for long enough to pic up a population of bacteria and then cleaned out the pebble substrate.

Here's a Before:

heres two Afters:

quite different with just a few rocks and blunted edged shards of terracotta over a glass bottom.

 

[Kayne]

is that a 2L coke bottle spray painted silver? is that not harmful to axolotls?

i might give it a try

 

[Kiwi303]

600Mls the other is a 1 litre cleaned Meths bottle also painted

I used an Enamel car paint, not the typical graffiti artists junk aerosol paint from the warehouse, let it cure and the solvents evaporate and there shouldn't be any released chemicals leached into the water.

 

[Shizeric]

600Mls the other is a 1 litre cleaned Meths bottle also painted

I used an Enamel car paint, not the typical graffiti artists junk aerosol paint from the warehouse, let it cure and the solvents evaporate and there shouldn't be any released chemicals leached into the water.

Are you sure? I don't know if I would trust the paint sitting in the tank for an extended period of time. Where did you learn this trick?

 

[shoegal]

Wow. I would be very nervous about adding something like that to my tank. It looks super cool, but I wouldn't feel confident that it wouldn't hurt my axies. I'm glad it is working for you though... : )

 

[Kiwi303]

Are you sure? I don't know if I would trust the paint sitting in the tank for an extended period of time. Where did you learn this trick?

Automotive paints, and by this I mean the real epoxy crystal resin based paints, not the cheap acrylic and polyester resin paints typically found in aerosol cans, form a strong chemical long-chain bond as they cure, hence the exothermic reaction during curing. the aerosol types in contrast don't bond so much as the lubrication between the particles which keep them liquid, evaporates, allowing the paint base particles to touch and adher to each other without creating a strong chemical bond.

2 pack epoxy paints, as I mixed and used on the bottles, react with each other, as they are made of a catalyst and a base, once the reaction is over and the paint is cured, leaching is minuscule to non-existent. These paints are what is used to line food grade containers, look inside a tin can sometime, most cans are coated with epoxy or ceramic lining to allow cheap junk metal to be used for the cans instead of expensive stainless.

Aerosol can single pack on the other hand can keep outgassing progressively smaller amounts of solvent for over a year from application.


It's basic chemistry.