Axolotl Central: Celebrating Two Years
Original photograph by Milie (_Lily_#5652).
In the spring of 2020, three friends set out to create an axolotl care focused community. At the time, we had already been assisting axolotl owners on the Reddit community, r/axolotls. However, we discovered that Reddit did not exactly allow for timely communication, and the whole process of helping people there felt a little inefficient.
It was in late April that we came to the conclusion that we wanted to create an axolotl Discord server to help people more easily and post axolotl care information. We spent a few days planning the layout of the server, and on May 6th, 2020, we opened up our first server invite, and our first member joined.
Screenshot of first member joining Axolotl Central and first messages sent in the server.
The goal of the new community was to create a place for axolotl owners to get all the information that they needed to be successful with their axolotls. We also strived to create a welcoming environment where everyone felt comfortable asking questions and sharing their axolotls. Our server moderators have put a huge amount of effort into making the community a welcoming place while assisting dozens of axolotl owners every day.
As our community continued to grow, we took it upon ourselves to create up-to-date axolotl care and aquarium cycling guides. Eventually, these guides outgrew our Discord server, and we decided to create a website to post them on. This website became a place for us to expand upon our care guides in the form of articles that could explore axolotl related topics in more detail.
Two years ago, Axolotl Central was little more than an idea. Over those two years, our community has grown into a thriving Discord community of more than 3,000 members. Our website, which launched in early 2021, has had over 80,000 visitors, and our most read article, Why are Axolotls Illegal to Own in Some States and Provinces?, has been viewed by over 50,000 people. When we started our Discord server, we never expected to build a community with over thousands of members, let alone have an article on our very own website that has been seen by tens of thousands of people.
Axolotl Central’s first published article to our website.
We have talked a lot about our community's past, so now let us take a moment and discuss its future. In the near future, we are planning to create a gallery of community member’s axolotls and their aquariums. We feel that it is important for our community’s website to better represent all its members, and we feel that this is one of the ways that we can best achieve this.
We are planning to publish more articles on axolotl care related topics. These include articles on ideal tank size for axolotls, the cost of owning an axolotl, the importance of ethically breeding axolotls, and more. These articles let us explain topics in more detail than our care guides do. We feel that these in-depth discussions are important for our community members as well as axolotl keepers in general.
In addition to these articles, we are also planning to start creating YouTube videos to go over our care guides. Eventually, we plan to make YouTube videos to go along with our articles as well. We believe that these videos will help us to reach a broader audience that is not necessarily inclined to read a long guide, but would feel more comfortable watching a video.
Sneak peak of upcoming Axolotl Central YouTube channel.
To say that we are incredibly thankful for our devoted community is an understatement just how lucky we are to have all of you. Axolotl Central set out with a simple goal, and the fact that we are still growing and developing this amazing community just goes to show how important all of this is. We never really had any expectations of where this community would go, but we are pleasantly surprised with these results.
Axolotl Central has had the unbelievable opportunity to help hundreds of people with their axolotls, and we look forward to helping many more. We are all extremely fortunate that all of you have believed in our community. We cannot wait to see how this community continues to grow over the next year!