Ask-A-Lotl Axolotls

01/11/2022

It has been too nuts to post much recently about the lotls. Babies have about doubled in size in 2 weeks! We have lost a few so we're down to only like 82 total. 🤦 I figured out a way to add some more space to each side for the bigs. Since Brooke still eats 2x a day, I have her a little bowl. She was NOT thrilled that I chased her all over the tank to try to put her in there to show her where the worms are. That is some serious side eye from behind the plants. Now that I finally got her in there she decided she'll stay in there for a while.

28/10/2022

THAT H***Y BASTARD!

27/10/2022

This h***y bu**er CRAWLED OVER THE DIVIDER to bust into her room. So now he has been moved into his own tank in solitary confinement to prevent any further accidents. He loves his new home. He really loves hunting his temporary roommates until we get them moved. (Excuse the cloudy water. I changed it and moved a lot of things around for him)

26/10/2022

Lotls 1 week old under the little microscope: Its really interesting how it was easier to tell their colors I thought when they were in the egg. Now that they are hatched their colors are changing and its harder. But look at that eye formation on the first one--the wild type. It's getting its shiny copper ring around the eye, and you can see the organ forming. We can still see all the organs and the blood flowing in the gills. It's SOOOOO cool! I really don't know what colors anything that is not obviously a wild type is going to be now.

24/10/2022

Axoltol babies at 1 week: they're growing and they eat SO MUCH! They eat freshly hatched baby brine shrimp. As I learned this week, I need to have 2 hatcheries going at once because it takes 24 hours to start hatching and they need to have them in there all the time. We were finally able to see how many may glow, it's a lot! It's hard out get a picture this is the best we could get. Waffles was hiding from the fresh water in the change, this was her hiding in the corner.

20/10/2022

Lotl baby day 3: Today was an adventure in figuring out how to make it work when things don't work as expected. Fortunately, that's my sweet spot. The baby brine shrimp didn't hatch as expected. (Lesson: have 2 hatcheries going all the time). Problem: you have to have live food for them to know to eat, they won't eat non-moving food. You cannot buy baby brine shrimp. I learned this only after buying a bag of adult brine shrimp (aka sea monkeys-they are entertaining) from a tropical fish store. So, I went to Petco and bought frozen brine shrimp (after going to Petsmart first. Lesson, Petsmart has better decorations and tanks. Petco has better feed). I thawed some and thought it was well chopped. I put it in the water along with a bubbler to make them move as if they were alive, but there were more big chunks than expected. (I now have a batch of the rest that I ran through with a stick blender as my backup.) Fortunately, the big chunks tended to settle to the bottom where I could suck them up. There are still a lot of little bits that they gobbled up (and still are). It's not pretty, but they are fed and not going to starve. I have done my duty!

19/10/2022

Here is a video of the babies eating their baby brine shrimp. They're little specks that swim around and prompt the babies to gobble.

19/10/2022

Babies day 2: we have 89 babies (including the unhatched eggs)! Our guess of their colors are 55 wild type (but there is a wide variety among them), 8 leucistic (pink with black eyes), 6 copper, 15 golden, and 3 albino (pink with clear eyes). Our next unknown is whether they glow. We will test for that this weekend and see. They eat baby brine shrimp that we hatch in the kitchen.

18/10/2022

Tonight we put the hatched babies in the hatched bins. We checked each one under the small microscope and kept track of the results. We talked about why there are so many more dark wild types than the others. Do you know why?

18/10/2022

Yummy, It's their first meal! Brine shrimp! (The little floating specks). They instinctively gulp when there is movement near their head.

16/10/2022

THE HATCHING HAS STARTED!

16/10/2022

Day 13: I was so worried until today that we were just going to have a bunch of boring wild type. But under the microscope today we could see some amazing colors developing! I'm excited for them to get the look as they grow.

16/10/2022

Lotls day 13: When I thought there was no way to get a better microscope video, it happened. YOU CAN SEE ALL FOUR CHAMBERS OF THE HEART PUMPING! And you can see the red blood cells going through the gills to pick up the oxygen and go back to the heart. It's absolutely amazing. I think this baby is going to be leucistic (pink ones) because it is extremely pale but has black eyes. This is giving me so much joy.

Watch a live axolotl embryo in the egg under a microscope as its heart pumps. You can watch each chamber pump individually, and see the blood flowing throug...

15/10/2022

Oops, lesson learned. DONT put a Volcano over the aerator. A number of eggs got stuck in between. It is now taken off, and stuck to the side. We found the palest embryo yet. The ones in there are a bit behind the others, but not too bad I think. It really didnt want a photo. Here is the suprise really pale one under the microscope.

15/10/2022

Lotl day 12: Today you can see their eyes with your naked eye. They're so close to hatching! I added a heater in the hopes that bumping them from 68 degrees (room temp apparently) to 72 (where they grow best) they'll hatch by Sunday. They're getting a bit more jumpy too.

14/10/2022

Day 11 Microscope Day Pt 2: PUMPING HEARTS!!!!! Seriously!!!!! It's absolutely amazing! You can watch the heart pump under the microscope, and then we go down the body to look at it closely. I hope that you enjoy it as much as we do! We looked to see if we could tell if they were GFP (glow in blue light), but they're not expressing that gene yet. We'll keep trying!

You will have no choice but to squeal at how amazing it is to see the heartbeat of an axolotl embryo in the egg that is only 11 days old. We will also go do...

14/10/2022

Lotls day 11 microscope day: BE PREPARED TO FLAP YOUR HANDS AND SQUEAL OUT LOUD AT THESE VIDEOS!!!!!!!! (That may or may not have been what I did when I noticed it happening). You can watch the blood pumping through the gills of the 10-day-old embryos under the microscope! These are twins in the same egg. Talk to your kid about how they are different and the same, even though they're twins. I hope you love the intro slide as much as I do. Annelyce came up with the chord and the voiceover all herself, Beckett played the piano for us. Thanks to Bartle Guitar Studio and FunKeyMusic for our children's musical education for the intro! Next up: PUMPING HEARTS PEOPLE!

Watch the blood pump through the gills of these 11-day old axolotls embryos still in their eggs. There isn't any audio yet. They are under a microscope, an...

13/10/2022

Lotl day 9, microscope day (a day late, oops)! It's unendingly fascinating. Look, it's getting an eye now! Look at those pink organs behind there! And the tail! Those gills! They're impossible to miss now. I am getting more hopeful that we will have some leucys (leucistic, pink ones) some, like the one that's on its side, are quite pale. Fingers crossed! There are several that were clearly malformed. We pulled one out to look at it, and observed how it stopped developing compared to the others. There was also an egg that didn't develop that I hadn't taken out yet because it was in the middle of a long string and I didn't want to damage the healthy ones on each side by cutting it out. It started going bad, so I chanced it and was able to get it out.

13/10/2022

Here's the video of the jumping babies!

13/10/2022

Day 10 of lotls: they hopefully will hatch this weekend! Check the next post for the video, it won't let me post along with the photos for some reason. Their gills keep getting longer and better. Today we changed the water, and it was grosser than I expected. We poured it through a fish net to catch any eggs that may try to escape (they didn't, all good). Even though the chemistry was fine, it's good that we changed it. I also noticed that if you've had the light on for a bit, and then turn it off, they get quite jumpy. So the video has a lot of movement! I took out a few more that were clearly gone. I think we're probably down to all of 80. We have big surprises coming up!

11/10/2022

Even the dog loves the Lotls! Photo description: little white terrier curled up on the couch with a homemade pink felt stuffy with sparkly yarn gills. No I didn't put it there, she did it on her own.

11/10/2022

Lotls Day 8: Photos They keep growing, but there are several that are not growing correctly. We can see gills with the naked eye today. I also learned about "egg color". I was concerned that we wouldn't get any leucistic ones (aka leucys, the pink ones) because they're all dark. I still may not based on the genes of the mom, but we'll see. Others told me that they don't get their final color until a week or 2 after hatching. We'll see what they end up being!

11/10/2022

Lotls Day 8: watch the video for movement! You probably want to watch the video twice to catch the movement. They keep growing, but there are several that are not growing correctly. We can see gills with the naked eye today. I also learned about "egg color". I was concerned that we wouldn't get any leucistic ones (aka leucys, the pink ones) because they're all dark. I still may not based on the genes of the mom, but we'll see. Others told me that they don't get their final color until a week or 2 after hatching. We'll see what they end up being!

10/10/2022

Don't hide it, lean into what makes you happy.

Beautiful, authentic you.

Artist: Katherine Herrell.
Note about art. This beautiful piece was shared by a friend and we posted it on this page to further share this work of joy. We mistakenly thought the Elizabeth Gilbert signature was the artist's. It's not. This work was created using Gilbert's quote but Katherine Harrell's signature had been removed. We want to make sure the artist gets proper appreciation for her creation. And you can browse and buy her other work on her Instagram, please take a moment to check her out at or www.katherineherrell.com

10/10/2022

Lotyls Day 7: The microscope was so cool today! Look at those gills! Look at that pigmentation! We looked at a set of twins where one is doing well but the other seems to have stopped developing. We’re learning all kinds of things about genetics, I will put them up when I'm at a computer and can type (its a lot). The summary is that we learned that their mom is a special kind of wild type called a starburst because of her extra sparkle idiraphones. Their dad Mochi also has alot of sparkle ( even though its hard to see on his pale skin). I'm hoping that these babies may have a lot of starburst wild types. It appears that mom Waffles doesn't have any recessive genes for the pink color, so we will see what other colors we might get.