Silly Axolotls
About US
The Breeder
Silly Axolotls are made up of eight axolotls who are owned by me, Sarah Pennicott, a 24 year old New Zealand breeder in Wellington. I have been raising and researching axolotls since purchasing my first axolotl Dickie in 2009.
Over the years I have upgraded from one axolotl to two, three, four, six and then eight. They take up a lot of time, especially during breeding season, so while I wish to upgrade and build a decent breeding company, it is too much work single handed, and makes going on holiday difficult. That is why it is a small business.
I have started to extend out into live food cultures, earthworms, and DIY aquarium ornaments and backgrounds. However, I am still learning and experimenting.
The Axolotls
Zeus
Zeus is my treasure, the rarest axolotl in New Zealand!
He is a mosaic, which is a combination of two axolotls in one. Mosaicism occurs when two cells fuse during development, much like a chimera but not half and half.
Zeus is a male, maybe 5 years old. He is the son of two piebalds, and is surprisingly fertile. You can see he is a wildtype, mixed with either golden albino or leucistic. His spots are yellowy and white, but his extra gill fronds are pink, like a leucistic. Only breeding him will help us to figure out his genetics.
Hephaestion
Hephaestion (Heph) is the second axolotl I bought. He is a male leucistic, and is just under six years old. He is 29cms long, from head to tail tip. I am unsure exactly of his genotype, or offspring, because he has always been in a tank with Haku. It is hard to deem how much offspring came from him. Since being separated, he has laid a lot of spermatophore, but has not successfully coerced any female into breeding, leaving me to wonder if he has fathered any at all. Hephaestion got his name from classical history. Hephaestion is the name of Alexander the Great's gay lover/best buddy.
Ziggy
Ziggy is the third axolotl I bought, and the matriarch of the tank, if there can be such a thing. She is a whopping 30.5cms long and fat as anything. She is the first to zoom around the tank and find all the food. She is a female golden albino, with a genotype of D/D a/a, meaning she only gives birth to wildtypes when matched with a leucistic, she has yet to be paired with a golden albino male, but she would produce only golds I believe. Her name is obviously influenced by Ziggy Stardust. She is between 5 and 6 years old, and is my best breeder. She breeds multiple times a year, and lays heaps of eggs. Unfortunately, they have all been wildtype to date.
Haku
Haku is my fourth, and thought to be last, axolotl. He is a leucistic male with a spotty face. He is 5 years old. He is also the biggest knob of them all. Look at that face. He is my main male breeder, I believe, but I have no proof. His genotype is d/d and he is not recessive for albino. He is named after Haku from Spirited Away, as well as the Haku in the first or second story in Naruto, of Zabuza and Haku.
Eugene
Eugene is a golden albino, about the same age as Charliehorse. He has a freckle on his face on the opposite side of Charles. He unfortunately gets a little close to the larger axolotls while eating, and ended up with no front legs. One has fully recovered, the other is still in the healing process. I no longer keep Charles and Ziggy together, and watch them during feeding time.
Zazu
Zazu is a very pale golden albino female. Zazu is named after the bird in the Lion King, my favourite movie. I have always wanted a pet named Zazu. She is a very keen breeder, accidentally breeding twice within the first two months I had her. She has since been separated for her own wellbeing. She goes between having an adorable face to having a creepy alien face. Her genotype is D/D a/a and she only gives birth to wildtypes or golden albinos.
Captain Grouch
Captain Grouch is a female wildtype. She is named that because when she was little, she had a large bump over her eye that looked like a grumpy eyebrow, and she looked grumpy all the time. She just recently had her first clutch with Zeus, which gave birth to wildtypes, leucistics and either white/gold albino. Unfortunately only 25 eggs developed, so can't say for certain what her genetics are but best one yet, to have three colours at once!
She is also known as HoverGrouch because she can barely stay on the floor, and is always hovering around the tank, floating or swimming.
Bananalotl
Banana is my first leucistic girl, with dirty face like Haku. I've yet to breed her. She's a cutie.
Ex-Silly Axolotls
Dickie
Dickie (Dicklips) was the first axolotl I ever owned. She was a female wildtype. Her name started as a joke, but kind of stuck and just became Dickie. I bought her in my first year of university, and fell in love. She died from several causes contributing together, at about seven years old, when I moved to Wellington at the start of 2015.
Charles
She is a female golden albino, and came into sexual maturity quite early, surprising me with a clutch of eggs after less than a year of having her, right at the end of the season. She has a spot on her nose, and isn't very photogenic. She hasn't grown much, her offspring Bobby Corwen is already larger than her. Breeding so young probably stunted her growth, so I gave her to a home who would not breed her too much.
Bobby Corwen
Bobby Corwen came with Zazu, and is about a year old now. They were both given to me, as they were needed to be rehomed, and I held onto them for about two years. Oops. He is a golden albino male. I believe he is the offspring of Charles and Eugene, as he was bought from the petstore I dropped my babies off at before going to Japan, around that time period. His name is a Final Fantasy IX reference, it is the name given to the Chocobo baby that hatches in the Black Mage village.
I decided to rehome Bobby eventually, because he is my offspring, and I don't want to encourage inbreeding unnecessarily.
