An axolotl sitter does not need a care manual; they need the last few weeks of your own routine, written where they can continue it. Water changes, test results, and feeding responses are exactly the details that vanish when instructions are given verbally at the door. One shared log, kept at the tank and written in the same simple format by you and the sitter alike, means you come home to a record you can read at a glance instead of a series of text messages to reconstruct.
Build the Log Around What Actually Changes
Use a waterproof notebook at the tank, a shared note on your phone, or one printed sheet per trip; the medium matters less than the columns. Keep them few and fixed: date, water changed (yes or no, and roughly how much), test results for the parameters you normally track, food offered, food actually eaten, and a short notes line. A sitter facing twelve columns will abandon the sheet by day three; a sitter facing five will complete it while the conditioner is being measured.
Write your own entries in that format for at least two weeks before you travel. Those entries are the real instruction: they show your axolotl's normal appetite, your usual change rhythm, and what ordinary test results look like in this tank, which is far more useful than generic target numbers copied from the internet. Circle or highlight anything the sitter should treat as a phone-call trigger, such as a test result well outside your tank's usual pattern, refused food at consecutive feeds, or damaged skin or gills.
Set the Tank Station Up for a Stranger
Leave everything the log refers to in one place beside the tank: test kit, water conditioner, the food itself portioned or clearly described, a container for preparing replacement water, and a torch for checking the axolotl without handling it. Axolotls should not be handled by an unfamiliar sitter, so write that plainly, along with the rule that uneaten food is removed rather than left to foul the water.
Add the details owners forget to mention because they are automatic: the light timer setting, what temperature range this tank normally sits in and what to do on a hot day, which plug is the filter and must never be switched off, and your phone number plus a backup contact. Keep instructions in the order the sitter will do them on a visit, not in the order you think of them.
Brief the Sitter Once, in Person
Walk through one full visit together before you leave: test the water, prepare and add replacement water exactly as you do it, offer food, and complete the log line together. That single rehearsal catches every ambiguity, such as which tap, how long conditioner stands, or how much food one feed actually means for a juvenile versus an adult. Agree how the sitter will reach you, how often you want a photo of the log, and what they should do, and not do, if something looks wrong: the safest default instruction is to change nothing extra and contact you.
When you return, read the log before you change anything. The pattern of appetite and test results across your trip tells you whether the tank cruised or drifted, and the sitter's notes line becomes the first entry of your resumed routine.
Handing over access cleanly completes the system, and KinsLe's Care Pass lets you give your sitter temporary, time-boxed access to your axolotl's routine and key details without sharing your whole account, so the log, the contacts, and the instructions sit in one place they can actually use.