How We Raised 240 Axolotl Babies This Spring

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It Started with a Surprise

We’ve been keeping axolotls for a few years now, but nothing quite prepares you for waking up one morning to find your tank carpeted in tiny, jelly-coated eggs. Arthur and Linda had been together for a while, and we knew a spawn was possible — but seeing it actually happen was something else.

Linda laid hundreds of individual eggs, carefully placed one by one on every plant, piece of decor, and surface she could find. Axolotls don’t cluster their eggs in a mass like many amphibians — each egg is deposited individually, wrapped in its own clear jelly coating. It took her the better part of two days to finish laying. By the time she was done, there were eggs everywhere.

The Eggs

We carefully moved the eggs to a dedicated nursery tank — a clean, cycled tank with gentle sponge filtration and no adult animals anywhere near them. Axolotl parents have no parental instinct and will readily eat their own eggs and larvae, so separation is non-negotiable.

The eggs sat in the nursery tank at around 64°F, slowly developing over the next couple of weeks. You can actually watch the embryos develop if you look closely — tiny dark spots that gradually form into recognizable shapes with external gills beginning to sprout. It’s remarkable to watch.

March 9th — Hatch Day

The eggs hatched on March 9th, 2026. Not all at once — hatching happened over a couple of days as each larva wriggled free of its jelly casing when it was ready. Newly hatched axolotl larvae are tiny, maybe half an inch long, with enormous heads relative to their bodies and the beginnings of external gills already visible. They’re astonishing little creatures.

For the first day or two post-hatch, the larvae survive on their yolk sac and don’t need to be fed. We left them alone and just monitored water temperature and quality closely.

The Brine Shrimp Operation

Here’s where things got interesting — and a little all-consuming. Newly hatched axolotl larvae are too small for blackworms. Their first food needs to be live, moving, and small enough to fit in a tiny mouth. The answer: baby brine shrimp, hatched fresh at home.

We set up a small brine shrimp hatchery using a two-liter bottle, an air pump, a pinch of aquarium salt, and brine shrimp eggs (cysts). Within 24–48 hours you have thousands of tiny, orange, wriggling nauplii ready to feed. We were running two hatcheries on rotation so there was always a fresh batch ready.

Feeding tiny larvae is a twice-daily commitment. We used a turkey baster to gently distribute the brine shrimp throughout the nursery tank so every larva had access to food. The little ones would hover in the water column, snapping at anything that moved near them. Watching 240 tiny axolotls hunting brine shrimp is genuinely one of the most entertaining things we’ve experienced in this hobby.

Growing Up Fast

Axolotl larvae grow remarkably fast in the right conditions. Within a few weeks they had transitioned off brine shrimp and onto blackworms, their gills had filled out beautifully, and their individual morph colors were beginning to show. Watching the copper leucistics and freckled leucistics differentiate from the axanthics and wild types was a highlight — the result of Arthur’s Het-Copper/Het-White Axanthic genetics combined with Linda’s Het-Copper Leucistic lineage producing a wonderful mix of outcomes.

By the time the animals reached 2–3 inches, we began transitioning them to individual or small-group grow-out containers to give each animal enough space and to monitor growth and health individually. This is time-consuming with 240 animals, but it’s the only way to catch problems early and ensure every animal leaving us is genuinely healthy.

What We Learned

Raising 240 axolotls from egg to juvenile is not a small undertaking. Here’s what we’d tell anyone considering doing it themselves:

• Water quality is everything. With a high density of small animals, ammonia builds fast. We were doing partial water changes daily on the nursery tank for the first month.
• Live food is non-negotiable for larvae. Frozen or prepared foods don’t cut it at the larval stage. Set up your brine shrimp hatchery before the eggs hatch, not after.
• Separate early. Axolotls are cannibalistic with animals smaller than themselves. Size-sort regularly and separate any animal that is noticeably larger or smaller than its tankmates.
• Observe daily. Problems are always easier to fix when caught early. Spend a few minutes each day watching your animals eat and move.

We’re incredibly proud of this clutch. Every animal that left the nursery tank is healthy, eating well, and has the full fluffy gills and bright coloring we aim for. We hope they bring as much joy to their new homes as they brought to ours.