Petting Axolotls? (and updates on Toothless)

Hey everyone,

So I was just reading around the post and saw a lot of people talking about Petting their axolotls. I wanted to know is this a safe idea and how to do so if it is? Don't want to scare the poor guy after all.

On the matters of Toothless he's doing fine. Got him to eat his pellets so now I use bloodworms once a week as kinda a special meal. Through hard scientific analysis and testing (aka, throwing pellets into the water seeing what he eats.) I find he eats 5 Hikari sinking pellets a day. He tends to swim in the back, either behind the two plants I got him or in/under his log.

I recently had a small scare. Turns out even though I live in Alaska, his tank still needs to be cooled off. I've been keeping a fan on in my room, a cool one with a thermometer so it doesn't keep my room at icebox levels. I've also when he's been getting too close to 70 F been rotating frozen water bottles to cool him off. Though with the winter approaching in October, I wonder if the natural heat of the house will put him too hot. Any suggestions for keeping an axolotl cool?

One last thing reddit, I have two water monitors aside from my thermometer. one that measures his PH the other measures ammonia. So far both are looking pretty good (Ph: 5.8, Ammonia >0.05ppm) so do I still need frequent water changes? He seems fine enough. Plus when and how should I clean my sponge filter. The man at the store said there's a way to do it without sacrificing the sponge and the helpful bacteria.

Thanks for reading my little rant/update.