In Minecraft, axolotls only eat live tropical fish — here's how to feed and breed them

• In Minecraft, axolotls only eat buckets filled with tropical fish.
• To get a bucket of tropical fish, you'll need to use a water bucket on a tropical fish.
• Quickly feeding two axolotls will cause them to mate and produce a baby axolotl.

Among all the NPCs (or "mobs") in Minecraft, axolotls are some of the newest. But if you want to keep one as a pet, or even breed them to start a farm, you'll need to know their unique diet.

What axolotls eat in Minecraft

In real life, axolotls love to eat live fish. This carries over into Minecraft, where they only eat buckets filled with live tropical fish.

In other words, if you kill a fish and pick it up, or catch it with a fishing rod, they won't eat that. Instead you'll need to fill a bucket with water, then use it on a tropical fish.

You can find tropical fish in lush caves — the same biome that axolotls spawn in — as well as warm oceans and mangrove swamps.

Once you've got a bucket of tropical fish, head over to your axolotls and use it on them. The tropical fish will disappear and you'll see a bundle of red hearts appear above the axolotl's head.

Don't worry about needing to chase down your axolotls to feed them — whenever you're holding a bucket of tropical fish, any nearby axolotls will swarm and follow you until you feed them or put it away.

Like other mobs, this is also how you can make two axolotls breed. Feed two nearby axolotls within 30 seconds of each other, and they'll come together to produce a baby axolotl.

Baby axolotls take 20 minutes to mature, but you can speed up the process by feeding them more buckets of tropical fish.