I did one final test. Baby axolotls swim, continuously hunting prey. My hypothesis was that the wee little cm axolotl baby that has just grown front and back feet should really need gastroliths and therefore have a strong instinctive drive to find them.
I put a tiny 3cm dish of fine coloured gravel in one bare corner of the 25 gallon tank, far from any food. Sure enough, I kept finding the little guys sitting on the gravel. When I offered them an assortment of sizes, each size a different colour, they would take the tiny rocks in their little mouths, wriggle their mouths in the cutest axolol style smile and swallow some and spit out others.
I could see the coloured stones in their transparent guts and they almost always took stones of one colour. They even have a size preference. I also found mucus and waste with stones all over the bottom of the tank. So it appeared the baby axolotls ingested the gravel deliberately and passed it at random. They pass through the gut and the animal has to constantly seek out fresh gravel. Gizzards of birds probably evolved for more efficient retention of gastroliths.
I also compared the swimming behaviour of baby axolotls who had access to gastroliths with those who did not. The ones with bright coloured gravel swam straight and fast. The others often missed prey because they rolled out of control on the big rush. So gravel gets the blame, when in reality there may be other things at play that went undetected.
Because people are trying so hard to make their tank as free as possible from small stones, their axolotls often get desperate to satisfy their instinctive desires for gastroliths. You know how people who were starving in the past would eat shoes, candles and other weird things that were dangerous? So it can be more dangerous to have them in with no substrate, if they end up swallowing something else weird. By trying to prevent impactions by depriving them of gastroliths, the animal may actually be placed at a greater risk of getting them.
The presence of gravel does not mean it is the primary cause of the issue — it can to be there when the animal is sick, but gets the blame because the owner does not know the reason why animal was sick to begin with, or overlooked it because of the gravel gut. I think you can still use pea gravel, but I believe if you are going to have this or larger size gravel than this, it is important to also provide smaller gravel so the axolotl has a choice.
In the US, a great alternative — which I personally use — I have found to be Pisces silver pearl or gold pearl aquarium gravel. The teeny pebbles herald from New Zealand and are beautiful, very smooth and can be used as gastroliths. If you only provide gravel that is too large, or only big pebbles, the axolotl may not find the gravel that is the right size and force itself to eat larger gastroliths than what it should, or other weird things which could lead to impaction.
And it would be a bit odd for an animal that does not forage to find its food, but waits for the food to float by and snap at it. Axolotls regularly bite each other on the leg as part of their whole social structure and the loser often ends up having to regenerate a whole limb. Axolotls also have cartilage not bone, just like young humans. We took advantage of this natural behaviour to do a comparison of imaging with ultrasound versus x-rays of regenerating limbs.
The results were that ultrasound works remarkably well. The work included the x-ray picture above. Look at that belly just packed full of gravel! We followed several animals over two years. Every time we took their x-ray or ultrasound, they had a belly full of rocks. They were also clearly healthy and normal.
As a scientist, one should never just accept received wisdom at face value, and so, since I was the axolotl expert in the collaboration, I got to do a full literature review on the topic.
The result was that I learned there is absolutely no proof whatsoever that axolotls get gut impaction from eating gravel. I also learned all about gastroliths. A gastrolith is a rock ingested by an animal on purpose and carried around in the gut to provide stability, a weighted keel, while swimming.
A clever pair of paleontologists explained that the little piles of rocks consistently found in the belly area of fossils of plesiosaurs were gastroliths. They pointed out an animal without a keel could compensate for the lack of a keel while swimming by having weight in the gut. Without such a weight, you end up rolling in the water as soon as you pick up any speed.
Fish have a swim bladder that makes the top lighter than the bottom and they have fins. Plesiosaurs swallowed rocks. After that, I found examples all over the scientific literature of gastroliths including a complaint from a fellow who was dissecting frog tadpoles for an unrelated reason about how you had to be careful because the tadpoles had little rocks in their guts that can wreck the very expensive fine blade of a scientific microtome.
Even seals apparently swallow gastroliths. I did one final test. Baby axolotls swim, continuously hunting prey. My hypothesis was that the wee little cm axolotl baby that has just grown front and back feet should really need gastroliths and therefore have a strong instinctive drive to find them. I put a tiny 3cm dish of fine coloured gravel in one bare corner of the 25 gallon tank, far from any food. Sure enough, I kept finding the little guys sitting on the gravel.
When I offered them an assortment of sizes, each size a different colour, they would take the tiny rocks in their little mouths, wriggle their mouths in the cutest axolol style smile and swallow some and spit out others. I could see the coloured stones in their transparent guts and they almost always took stones of one colour.
They even have a size preference. I also found mucus and waste with stones all over the bottom of the tank. So it appeared the baby axolotls ingested the gravel deliberately and passed it at random. They pass through the gut and the animal has to constantly seek out fresh gravel. Gizzards of birds probably evolved for more efficient retention of gastroliths. I also compared the swimming behaviour of baby axolotls who had access to gastroliths with those who did not.
The ones with bright coloured gravel swam straight and fast. The others often missed prey because they rolled out of control on the big rush. The take home message is this. Axolotls have a strong instinctive urge to swallow gastroliths. All those stories of pet keepers who have lost animals who swallowed plants and garbage probably had animals desperately trying to satisfy their instinctive urge to eat gastroliths.
Sometimes, even in science, received wisdom and the consensus of the experts is just plain wrong. Question everything, even and maybe especially, from the experts in science. Always go back and evaluate the original data for yourself.
Scientists are first and foremost human beings and they are subject to all the failures of human beings. Oh, and you CAN keep your axolotl on gravel and they will probably be happier for it. Like Like. However there have been reports of people ingesting bizarre things and I think while mostly it wold pass right through a human system, it could kill a person if that person got a blocked gut.
So, this article is severely incorrect. Axolotls should only be on bare bottoms or sand-like substrate. You should not place your axolotls in an environment in which they can be exposed to harm if you truly care for your creatures, including rock bottoms.
Lottls are not intelligent hunters they are almost completely blind and therefore, they think everything is food; that is why they swallow and pass rocks. Axolotls who eat rocks can experience blockages, tearing of their immune systems, and many more health problems across the course of time.
This article is extremely dangerous and full of misinformation. I do hope that the person who wrote this chooses to take better care of their lottls in the future and switches to a lottl-friendly substrate. I apologize for my harsh tone, but I am extremely upset to hear of this dismissive behavior from someone who claims to own adults and babies. This is negligence. Why would you place your lottls in an environment where they are prone to eat rocks rather than giving them a safe environment simply in terms of experimenting for your own benefit to disprove genuine research?
If you are purchasing a lottl for the first time, please do not listen to this article. Opt for a sand-like substrate instead, or a bare bottom. This will ensure your lottl is healthy and not stressed. Your response is precisely the kind of hysterical biased personal opinion that my entire article was about. You have no research to quote, no personal experiments and nothing to offer but your opinion. I advise you to go back and read what I wrote again very carefully. Obviously you missed everything but your personal beliefs being challenged and you are unable to process that challenge or consider you just might be wrong.
Hi, i actually run a rescue and this is massivly incorrect, i will be doing a video soon with my research and will send you it. Resources Latest reviews Search resources. Chat 0 Top chatters. Ask a question. Everywhere Threads This forum This thread. Filters Search. New posts. Search forums. Advanced search. Axolotls are illegal in California. JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. You are using an out of date browser.
It may not display this or other websites correctly. You should upgrade or use an alternative browser. My axolotl is eating rocks and floating what do i do? Thread starter stephen Start date Mar 26, My axolotl Axel is eating rocks and floating.
The other day i saw it drop out 10 rocks. How can I stop it eating the rocks? Also what is your tank temperature, have you had problems cooling the tank this could be the reason for floating? The water temperature is 19C. Is that an ok temp? Lesson One: The best substrate you can offer your Axolotl is sand, avoid any kind of rocks, even large or very small ones, not only can they easily be swallowed it also makes for much harder tank maintenance with debris settling in between the stones.
I replaced the stones with kids play sand from Bunnings, which took ALOT of water changes to get it to a point where it was clear. I would recommend turning on the filter as early as you can in the process to help clear the water sooner.
After this was sorted I thought I had it made, that is until I checked the weatherzone app on my phone and saw a cracking week of 30 degrees approaching.
I got a bit nervous about this as all my reading had lead me to the solid conclusion that Axolotls much prefer temps of around degrees celsius — basically the colder end of the scale being much more comfortable for them. I then decided a good place to start was to buy a thermometer so I could at least monitor tank temperatures.
In fact no matter where you live just get one! Well worth it for a creature who is very sensitive to temp fluctuations. Before the forecasted week of hideous weather was meant to begin, I got sprung with a 33 degree celsius day and spent the whole day at work worried that Ewok would not make it. He did — I have no idea how, since his tank was hitting around 27 degrees and upwards by the time I got home at pm so god knows how hot it was at the peak of the day!!
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