axolotl

[sandy]

Has anyone got on of these fascinating creatures?

[Trev62]

I have never known anyone that keeps these but when I lived in England I used to buy newt eggs from a conservationist who was allowed to sell them. These I raised using indoor tanks before releasing them into my garden wildlife pond, eventually I managed to establish a self supporting colony of newts. People used to think I was mad but these creatures still facinate me today.

Are you thinking of getting an axoloti?

[lancashire lass]

I used to keep axolotls - way back in the 1980s when I worked in London in a university lab, one of the academics did research on these (and toads) in the developmental research. When an axolotl loses a tail, leg or gill (trust me, axolotls are cannibals!), they regrow again. Anyway, my colleague had got too many for the project and the surplus were about to be sacrificed (as in killed), so we took some home. I started off with 5 grey ones (as in, the natural colour) and then slowly, one by one they started to disappear. The number of times I wondered if they had escaped their tank but ... you guessed it, one of them had started to grow to an enormous size and that's when I realised that he was eating his siblings. I called him George.

Later on, I acquired an albino and when it was bigger, put George and Pinky in a 4x1x1 foot tank which was kept outside during the summer. One day there was spawn and I ended up with hundreds of them. I tried to give them away but no-one wanted them so in the end, I had to let the adults eat them. I had George for another 2 years - he was easily 15 inches long - but then disaster. I used to put him in a crate of water left in the bath when I cleaned his tank out and replaced the water (left for 24 hrs to get rid of the chlorine) Unfortunately, I hadn't shut the bathroom door and the cat had got in while I was at work. George was badly mauled and didn't recover. So sad.

[sandy]

Aw poor George We had one as our classroom pet at school, while everyone else had gerbils,hamsters and goldfish! Our teacher was a lovely man who replaced our axolotl with two ducks when it disappeared. That was back in 1967 and I have always wanted one.