Guide to Breeding Axolotls in Minecraft

Before leaving home, make sure you have everything you need! Beside having a place to both breed and maintain axolotls, you’ll need:

• 4 Water Buckets
• Anvil or Name Tags
• Boat

In 1.17, you could find axolotls in any deep underwater area. However, in 1.18, that changed. Axolotls spawn underwater in lush cave biomes and when there is a clay block less than five blocks below their spawning space. If you’re having trouble finding a lush cave, check out this guide! Axolotls are passive toward players and can be attached to leads.

The best way to catch them, however, is with a water bucket. Simply right click them with a water bucket in the main hand, and they’ll pop right into your inventory!

Once you’ve located the two axolotls you want, move on to the next step.

The next stop before home will require sailing the seas. Axolotls require a bucket of tropical fish each to breed. Tropical fish only spawn in the following biomes:

• Lukewarm Ocean
• Deep Lukewarm Ocean
• Warm Ocean
• Lush Caves

Chances are, by the time you’ve found axolotls inside a lush cave, they’ve already depleted the population of tropical fish. Personally, that’s a bit of an oversight on Mojang’s part, but we digress.

Take to the ocean and use F3 or a map mod to find the correct biome. The best way to spot a possible tropical fish location is by looking out for a brightly colored coral reef.

Just like with the axolotls, grab up two tropical fish inside a bucket. Do not kill a tropical fish! Axolotls prefer their prey alive.

Now it’s time to head home and get busy!

Before you place down your axolotls, make sure you rename them at an anvil or with a name tag. While usually an axolotl picked up with a water bucket won’t despawn, it’s best to stay on the safe side.

Once your axolotls are placed where you want them, it’s time for them to get…busy. As soon as you hold out a bucket of tropical fish, they’ll become very interested in you. Simply right click each axolotl with a bucket of tropical fish, and they’ll begin breeding!

The coloring of the baby axolotl will be random, inheriting one of their parents’ color. A baby axolotl has a 1/1200 chance to be the rare blue variant. It’ll take 20 minutes for the babies to grow into adulthood, so you’ll have some time to cherish how tiny they are.

There you have it! The beginning of your axolotl army!

If you’re interested in what other changes occurred in Minecraft’s 1.18 update, check out this overview!