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Are axolotls difficult to care for?

Axolotls are very easy to care for if you have the right setup. Given proper housing conditions, all you need to do to keep your axolotl happy is to feed it and keep its water clean.

Feeding
An adult axolotl only needs to eat one live earthworm every other day (the kind used as fishing bait all over the country). The axolotls I sell are also trained to accept pellets. Those are a convenient backup, but I still recommend feeding earthworms if you can, as they don’t get the water dirty the way pellets tend to.

Spot cleaning
Whatever you choose to feed your axolotl, within a day or so it will all come back out as one big solid poop, which is easily picked up using a turkey baster. I do recommend picking up the poop as soon as you spot it, since axolotls are silly creatures who will put anything in their mouth. If they eat their own poop by mistake, they will do a spit take and scatter bits of poop everywhere!

Weekly maintenance
Whether your axolotl makes poop rain or not, you will need to do weekly water changes. Use a siphon to remove 1/3 to 1/2 of the water, and refill with dechlorinated water (or water from the tap, with some conditioner added).

That’s it! As far as pets go, they are not very demanding at all, but you do need to be consistent about these three things.