45 vastausta aiheeseen

[Masquerade]

Eli mitä kaikkea te syötätte aksoillenne?

Itse olen antanut sirkkoja (niin eläviä kuin kuolleitakin), jauhomatoja, välillä katkarapuja ja nyt ottaisin mielelläni vinkkejä vastaa mitä kaikkea muuta näille otuksille voisi kokeilla antaa!

[Joonas]

Kastematoja. Kesällä luonnosta, talvella kalastustarvikekaupan/osaston jääkaapista, missä niitä myydään syöteiksi.

[Masquerade]

_{Ai niitä saa ihan kalastustarvikekaupoista! tuo ei oo käynyt mulla edes mielessä. Täytyy varmaan käydä katsastamassa!}

[Kidukset]

@ Masquerade; what kind of shrimps do you give? Are they from salty water?
Criquets (sirkkoja) and meal worms (jauhomatoja) are a very bad food for axolotls as they are for reptiles and axolotls are amphibians. They wouldn't find these in their natural environment and these 2 have way too hard shell/bodies for the soft axos. Living ones could wound the axolotl too.
Proper stap food is fresh water fish, earth worms and axopellets. Anything from the sea is to avoid as axolotls live in freshwater.
More infos; http://www.axolotl.org/feeding.htm =)

I feed moslty earthworm from my own worm farm and fresh water fish from the fishshop (kuhaa, ahven, pangasius, hauki...)

[Kidukset]

Also, what's the size of your axolotls and how many times a week do you feed them?

[Joonas]

Criquets (sirkkoja) and meal worms (jauhomatoja) are a very bad food for axolotls as they are for reptiles and axolotls are amphibians. They wouldn't find these in their natural environment and these 2 have way too hard shell/bodies for the soft axos.

I do disagree with this one. Axololts do eat aquatic insects in wild. And thus they are adapted to manage with insects' chitin exoskeleton.

Following is quote from Kidukset's link, http://www.axolotl.org/feeding.htm:

I've fed mealworms to my axolotls, but the chitin (the protein that makes up the hard exoskeleton in insects) is undigestible to the axolotls. Even though I didn't feed many, the filter in-take actually started to clog with little pieces of chitin and I was still picking bits of chitin out of the filter media months afterwards. Apart from this little inconvenience, they're not a complete food, so I would only recommend them as a treat.

Author's observation is correct, but the conclusion is wrong: all amphibians that eat insects do defecate the chitin. That is the normal amphibian way to manage with it! all amphibians do so. There is nothing biologically wrong with it. Only negative side might be that the filter gets jammed. But that is a minor problem that has nothing to do with salamander's healt.

It is true that nutritional value of meal worms is bad and thus they are best as a treat. But crickets on the other hand are exelent food for all amphibians. Also for axolotls.

It is also true that crickets are not naturally available in axos' natural environment. But many aquatic insects are readily available. Thus crickets are nice substitute. Just like pike, perch or pikeperch (hauki, ahven & kuha) are substitutes to real mexican fresh water fish.

[Kidukset]

At the contrary of several "common in captivity amphibian", axolotls are only aquatic and will never got to land unless they are morphed. Their wild habitat is the bottom of lakes and they do not hunt food at the surface. So they most likely do not eat much insects in the wild but rather small fishes and worms or other axolotls.
They sometimes come to the surface but it is just to gulp some air and therefore not to eat.

Crickets aren't recommended as a stap food for axolotls and the live ones can cause internal damages. Meal worms are very fat and have only few vitamins, they can be given sometimes only as a treat.

Juvenile axolotls should be fed blood worms and small slices of fresh water fish.

[Daimian]

I do disagree with this one. Axololts do eat aquatic insects in wild. And thus they are adapted to manage with insects' chitin exoskeleton.

Following is quote from Kidukset's link, http://www.axolotl.org/feeding.htm:


Author's observation is correct, but the conclusion is wrong: all amphibians that eat insects do defecate the chitin. That is the normal amphibian way to manage with it! all amphibians do so. There is nothing biologically wrong with it. Only negative side might be that the filter gets jammed. But that is a minor problem that has nothing to do with salamander's healt.

It is true that nutritional value of meal worms is bad and thus they are best as a treat. But crickets on the other hand are exelent food for all amphibians. Also for axolotls.

It is also true that crickets are not naturally available in axos' natural environment. But many aquatic insects are readily available. Thus crickets are nice substitute. Just like pike, perch or pikeperch (hauki, ahven & kuha) are substitutes to real mexican fresh water fish.

I think you didn't quite think your argument through. I would assume that you would feed an axo pieces of already dead fish and wouldn't thow a live pike in the tank as "food"? Fresh water fishes are great food for axos and it doesn't matter much which fresh water fish you offer to the axos in small pieces. This is because their structure doesn't differ too much between fishes from the feeding standpoint. Crickets on the other hand live only on the land, have hard body, wings and sharp legs. Axos live on the bottom of the lakes and as said don't hunt on the surface at all. There is basically nothing at all that would even remotely resemble a cricket in their natural habitat. Anything they would find on the bottom of the lake would have softer body and limbs and hence wouldn't cause any harm for the intestines of the axo, like a cricket could very well do. So if you care for the well being of your pet, you should seriously consider feeding them something else than crickets on a regular basis.

[Joonas]

Maybe my idea is wrong.
Many amphibians do eat insects with chitin cover. And they do manage with it by defecating it. This is true also with other, terrestrial Ambystoma species, like tiger salamander. For me it is hard to believe that two so closely related species would be so different. But I must admit that you are right: there are not so many hard shelled insects at the bottom layer of the lake, so axololts do not eat them often.

Must keep studying if chitin is really a health issue for axos. Until that, I suppose that it really might be best to avoid it. Just in case

[Kidukset]

The diet difference between Ambystoma Mexicanum and Ambystoma Tigrinum resides indeed in their living places. The first ones spend their whole lifes in the water (unless rare metamorphosis happens) when the second one is going to live its adulthood on land. Therefore their diets are very different despite how close cousins they are.
Anyway both species juveniles do eat the same food which consists of insect's larvae and small worms. The diet changes when the Tigrinum morphes to live on land.

So that's one of the reasons, with the high risk of internal injuries (axo's guts not being made for sharp crickets), why axolotls shouldn't be fed crickets =)

[triton]

True that meal worm isn't good food even if I thing that it won't damage any animal if given rarely. As Joonas said chitin cover will be defecate.
And about insects, I do think so that Ambystoma mexicanum eat some in the wild as fishes eats insects that fall down in the water. So why not crickets if those are not XL size?

[Kidukset]

Because only few insects find their way to the bottom of the lakes where the axos live and they eat water insects which are completely different from a cricket. And there are several way easier and safer food to give to axolotls so why risking by giving crickets?

[Joonas]

I found a gut content analysis for wild (adult) axolotls. Following diagram is based on scientific data.


Some interesting notes:

- 26 % is plant&algae material. Is it possible that all that has come inside animals guts&stomachs? Or do the salamanders actually eat plants?
- Only 7 % of diet is fish
- 15 % is crustaceans. Most crustaceans have hard chitin exoskeleton.
- Chironomids is labeled "Chironomids". No "Chironomid larvae" (see "Hemiptera larvae" for comparison). Adult Chironomids have some hard chitin in their body, unlike their larvea that is usually fed in aquarium.

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Ja sitten sama suomeksi. Onhan Herppi.net kuitenkin pääosin suomenkielinen foorumi!

Yllä oleva kuvaaja pohjautuu kuvan yläpuolella mainittuun tieteelliseen lähteeseen. Se kuvaa villien aikuisten aksolotlien suolistosta löytyneen materiaalian analyysiä.

Muutama kiinnostava huomio:

- 26 % on kasvi- ja levämateiraalia. Voiko noin suuri määrä tulla salamanterin syömien eläinten mukana, vai saattavatko aksolotlit luonnossa syödä kasveja?
- Ainoastaan 7 % ruokavaliosta on kalaa
- 15 % on äyriäisiä. Useimmilla äyriäisillä on kova kitiinikuori.
- Surviaissääsket on nimetty nimemomaan "surviaissääsket". Eikä "surviaissääsken toukat" (kuten "nivelkärsäisten toukat merkitty). Surviaissääsket syötetään akvaariossa yleensä nimemomaan toukkina, joissa on vähemmän kitiiniä kuin aikuisissa.

[Kidukset]

Thanks for sharing! This is quite interesting especially the plant part!

It is written under the graph "food web overlap among native axolotl (Ambystoma Mexicanum) and two exotic fishes carp (Cyprinus Carpio) and tilapia (Oreochromis Nilocitus) in Xochimilco, Mexico city." so should we understand the graph is for the 3 species or only the axolotl?

Carps and tilapia eat plants =)

Viimeksi muokannut Kidukset, 14 maaliskuu 2012 - 23:33.

[Daimian]

It really seems like this is a study for all 3 since as said the 2 fishes do eat plants and algae materials. Axolotls on the other hand are 100% carnivores so I highly doubt that in the nature they would accidentally have 1/4th of their diet in plants.

[Daimian]

Also worth nothing is the fact that the 2 fishes studied here do not eat other fishes so all the fish material found inside of the 3 species would have to have come from the axos.

[Joonas]

It is written under the graph "food web overlap among native axolotl (Ambystoma Mexicanum) and two exotic fishes carp (Cyprinus Carpio) and tilapia (Orochromis Nilocitus) in Xochimilco, Mexico city." so should we understand the graph is for the 3 species or only the axolotl

This graph is based on data of table 1 of that study. I included only axolotl data in my graph. Table 1 covers also those two fish species, but their data is omitted above. So the study really shows that 26% of the material in axolots gut is plant based.

For more info, please see the original study: http://limnology.wis...tal_BiolInv.pdf

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One more interresting note about results: All "real worms", like subclass Oligochaeta (including earth worms) is basically totally missing from natural axo diet. There is only 3% of other invertebrates. That 3% may include any invertebrates.

Vielä yksi kiintoisa havainto tuloksista: kaikki "oikeat madot, kuten harvasukamatojen alaluokka (joka sisästää kastemadot ja muut lierot) käytännössä puuttuu kokonaan villien aksolotlien ruokavaliosta. Muita selkärangattomia on 3%, mikä voi sisältää paljon muitakin ötököitä.

[Daimian]

Axolotls can get plant material inside of them while feeding since the way they eat is by vacuuming the water in when something resembling food is moving in front of their mouth. They can't digest the plant material, their digestive system isn't made for that and it comes out as it once entered. This also happens sometimes in the home aquariums so if you have had axolotls for a few years I would assume you'd have seen it once or twice already.

Also the fact that majority of their diet in the nature doesn't consist of invertebrates doesn't mean that they wouldn't be great food for them. Actually earth worms are one of the most nutrient heavy and ideally balanced foods for axos and most importantly completely unable to harm the axos physically.

[Kidukset]

I can testify of axos sometimes eating by mistake plant material. Even though our home tanks are way more tidy than the lakes plus do have filters!

Anyway people can feed whatever they want to their pets, they own them, but they have the responsability to care for them properly.

It is true that in Finland the lack of information about axolotls is huge, there's no website and the pet stores just try to sell their own products (meal worms and crickets for example). You can just check here or on Petsie, pictures of axolotls and their set up and you'll see tanks with gravel, wood, other not recommended companions, ect..
In central Europe, mostly in Germany, Switzerland and France, axolotls have almost become a common pet and they have been maintained well for years, even creating new colors such as coppers and dalmatians. There are plenty of sites and forums, fairs and breeders over there.

Here are some links you may want to check, translation device should help you to get the essential of the information;

http://www.axolotl-passion.net/

http://www.axolotl-suisse.info/

http://www.axolotl-online.de/
The forums of these 3 are a gold mine of information and I spent several years on them to try to sort out the right and the wrong

Some random pages;

http://exoticpets.ab.../a/axolotls.htm

http://www.myaxolotl...ing-feeding.htm

Axolotls are pretty unique and different from their land cousins so why not taking this point in consideration for the well being of the little beast?

Viimeksi muokannut Kidukset, 15 maaliskuu 2012 - 20:26.

[Joonas]

Here are some links you may want to check, translation device should help you to get the essential of the information;

Thanks for the links. Because I don't read German or French, and Google translate is so cumbersome to use, could you please find me a direct link (or quote) to a text that states that axolotl's digestive system is more delicate than digestive system of its terrestrial relavites. I really would like to learn more about that subject.