Axolotls are little tameable underwater pets that are very useful in underwater combat and can also be a nice addition to your pet collection. They can hunt both hostile and friendly underwater mobs and can be carried in buckets.
They spawn in lush caves near a clay block, and can survive up to 5 minutes out of water. You can feed and tame them with a “Bucket of Tropical Fish”.
What You Can Feed Axolotls With
A Bucket of Tropical Fish is the only item axolotls respond to when a player feeds them. Only the bucketed version works – the loose Tropical Fish item does not.
Loose Tropical Fish items, raw cod, raw salmon, and other fish items do not work on axolotls. If you've been trying to feed axolotls with fish from your inventory and getting no response, switching to a bucket will fix it immediately.
What a Bucket of Tropical Fish Does to Axolotls
- Tempting: Axolotls will follow you while you're holding the bucket.
- Breeding: Use the bucket on two adult axolotls to breed them. Each use consumes the fish and leaves you with a plain water bucket.
- Baby growth: Feed a bucket to a baby axolotl to cut 10% off its remaining growth time. Feed it multiple buckets in a row for a noticeable speedup early in the timer.
How to Get a Bucket of Tropical Fish
You need to catch a live tropical fish with a water bucket – merely picking up a fish item from the ground or fishing won’t do here. Here's the process:
- Craft a bucket with 3 iron ingots in a V shape, then fill it with water.
- Find tropical fish – they spawn in warm and lukewarm ocean biomes, lush caves, and on Java Edition, also in mangrove swamps.
- Walk up to a tropical fish in the water, aim at it, and right-click with the bucket. The fish gets scooped up and you now have a Bucket of Tropical Fish.
One thing to note: buckets don't stack, which means gathering enough for a breeding session will take up inventory space fast. For farming axolotls efficiently, make sure to bring several empty buckets if you're planning a dedicated axolotl farm.
How Breeding Works with Axolotls
What You Will Need
You need two adult axolotls – babies will follow adults around but they can't breed. To trigger love mode, use a Bucket of Tropical Fish on the first axolotl, then quickly use another bucket on the second. Both will then enter love mode, come together, and a baby will spawn. You get a small XP reward of 1 to 7 experience for a successful breed as well.
After breeding, both parents will go on a cooldown before they can breed again. On Java Edition that cooldown is 5 minutes. On Bedrock Edition, this cooldown is shrinked to just 1 minute, so Bedrock players can cycle through breeds much faster.
How Baby Axolotls Grow
A baby axolotl takes 20 minutes of real time to grow into an adult on its own. Feeding it a Bucket of Tropical Fish cuts 10% off the remaining growth time with each use, so stacking a few buckets early on makes a noticeable difference.
Baby axolotls will follow adult axolotls around, so if you're running a breeding pen, expect babies to trail the adults while they grow.
The Rare Blue Axolotl
Every baby axolotl has a 1 in 1200 chance to spawn as the rare blue variant. If that rare roll does not happen, the baby inherits one parent’s color at random, which means breeding an existing blue axolotl gives you a much better shot at getting another blue one.
How Axolotls Fight and Survive
Beyond counting on player-feeding efforts, axolotls also hunt certain aquatic mobs on their own to survive. On Java Edition they’ll hunt tropical fish, pufferfish, salmon, cod, tadpoles, squid, and glow squid on their own. They're also hostile toward Drowned, Guardians, and Elder Guardians, which makes them useful in underwater fights besides being nice to keep around.
When you're fighting underwater mobs alongside axolotls, the game will reward you for your teamwork: if you kill a mob that was actively fighting one of your axolotls, you get a regeneration effect. On Java Edition, the regeneration lasts for 5 seconds per axolotl involved in the fight, capped at 2 minutes total. You'll also have the mining fatigue effect removed on kill, which is particularly useful when you're clearing out an ocean monument.
Axolotls have a survival trick that catches players off-guard. When they take damage underwater, they may play dead for around 10 seconds. While playing dead, hostile aquatic mobs leave them alone and they gain Regeneration I, which can recover up to 4 hearts. Once the timer is up, they come back and rejoin the fight.
How to Move Axolotls Around
The cleanest way to transport an axolotl is to scoop it into a bucket the same way you would pick up tropical fish. Right-click an axolotl with an empty bucket in hand and you will get a Bucket of Axolotl you can carry anywhere. This lets you move them long distances without the stress of herding them through water.
For short distances, axolotls can also be attached to a lead. They can survive on land for a while, but they dry out after about 5 minutes, so keep land travel short if you're not using a bucket.
Mods That Work Well with Axolotls
These mods either add more fish to your world for axolotls to hunt and live alongside, or help you understand animal diets and breeding requirements without leaving the game.
Aquaculture 2
Aquaculture 2 expands Minecraft’s fishing system with over 30 new fish that can be caught with a rod or found swimming in the wild. It also adds new rods, hooks, bait, line and bobber customization, plus a Tackle Box for applying modifiers and storing extra fishing gear.
Different biome types, including modded biomes, get their own fish, which makes rivers, ponds, and oceans feel more active. The mod also adds fish fillets and extra fishing loot, including Neptunium gear.
Just Enough Breeding
Just Enough Breeding (JEBr) is a JEI, REI, and EMI plugin that displays breeding information for various mobs. It adds extra categories that show which items mobs need to breed, displays the mob’s spawn egg for easier lookup, and shows the number of eggs produced if the mob lays eggs after breeding. If a mob must be tamed before breeding, its name is marked with “(tamed)” in the interface.
That makes breeding requirements easier to check in-game while you play. For axolotls, it gives you a quick way to look up the required breeding item through your recipe viewer.
Tide 2
Tide 2 expands Minecraft’s fishing system with more than 100 new fish, along with new mechanics and rewards built around fishing. It adds a fishing minigame for each catch, bait that can improve fishing speed or provide bonuses, and an Angling Table that lets you customize rods with hooks, lines, and cosmetic bobbers.
It also adds a fishing journal that tracks your catches, fish habitats, and completion progress while you play. With so many added fish and habitat details, water areas feel much more active and give aquatic parts of the world a bigger role.
Feeding Indicators
Feeding Indicators adds visual item indicators above animals so you do not have to check a wiki for breeding or taming requirements. When you hold an animal’s food, icons appear above adults that are ready to breed and are not on a breeding cooldown.
It also lets you crouch and look at an animal to cycle through every item it can eat, including modded animals. For axolotls, that makes it easier to confirm the correct feeding item in-game instead of testing different fish by hand.
How to Install Minecraft Mods
You can install the above mods automatically using the CurseForge app or manually by placing the mod files within your game’s mods folder. Both methods allow you to easily add custom features and enhancements into your vanilla Minecraft experience.If you want to learn more, you can read our detailed guide on how to install Minecraft mods.
Common Issues and Quick Fixes
Axolotls won't enter love mode
Check what you're holding. Loose Tropical Fish items, raw cod, raw salmon, and similar fish items won't work – axolotls only respond to a Bucket of Tropical Fish. If you have the right item, make sure both axolotls are adults – babies follow adults around and look similar at a glance, but they can't breed. Also check the breeding cooldown: 5 minutes on Java Edition and 1 minute on Bedrock after a successful breed. If an axolotl was fed and then picked up in a bucket before it reached its mate, it loses its willingness to breed and has to be fed again.
Bucket turns into a water bucket after feeding
That's the intended behavior. When you use a Bucket of Tropical Fish on an axolotl, the fish gets consumed and the bucket stays as a plain water bucket. Bring extra buckets if you're planning multiple breeds in one session – you'll need one Bucket of Tropical Fish per axolotl per feed.
I accidentally dumped the fish into the water
Right-clicking the ground or a block with a bucket empties it instead of feeding the axolotl. The fish ends up in the water where it can quickly get hunted. Building a small enclosed breeding pen helps reduce misclicks by keeping the axolotls close and giving you fewer surfaces to accidentally click.
Axolotl died while on land
Axolotls can survive on land briefly, but they dry out and die after being about 5 minutes out of water. Always transport them in a bucket for any distance longer than a few blocks, and make sure any pen or tank you build keeps them in water at all times.
I’m not getting the Regeneration buff in combat
You get Regeneration and Mining Fatigue removal only when you kill a mob that is actively fighting one of your axolotls – killing nearby mobs that haven't targeted your axolotls doesn't count. On Java Edition, the buff is Regeneration I for 5 seconds per axolotl involved in the fight, capped at 2 minutes in total.
Mods are not loading or game crashes at startup
A missing dependency or wrong version can cause the game to crash at startup, so check the dependencies tab on each mod’s CurseForge page before loading anything in. Alternatively, you may need to match your mod files to your exact Minecraft version and mod loader.