2's Company

Hi All, new poster here so please forgive me if this has been asked before.

I have been keeping two axolotls for about 15 years now and one recently died and the second is not looking healthy (fungal infection). I am treating the second axoltl and hope that it'll pull through.

My question is that when the first one (Axel) died the second (Foley) became quite stressed. I am not looking to replace Axel but I would presume that Foley was used to the company.

Has anyone had any experience on how a older axolotl will react to a new companion? Foley is quite old and probably stressed enough already, I am not sure if the addition of a new axolotl will cause greater stress. Either way I will be waiting until Foley (hopefully) recovers before doing anything.

Thanks for your patience in reading this somewhat lengthy post .

Congrats on 15 year old axies! That's quite a feat!

While the one is ill, I definately wouldn't add another one (as you already stated). But the stress you're noting could just be from the illness, not from 'loneliness'.

when your ill axolotl have recovered you can get a new axolotl. older axolotls will do just fine with younger ones but try get one the same size as your current axolotl. this will reduce the chances of cannibilism.

dont forget quarentine!

Sorry for your loss David. I also want to congratulate you on caring for your axolotls for so long. I'm fascinated to know how big they got in 15 years?

Have you found the information on this discussion board about salt baths and use of methylene blue for fungus?

Hi All, thanks for your advice on the matter. Unfortunately Foley didn't make it through the weekend. I think there was more to it than fungal infection, there were signs of a bacterial infection too.

Deb, I did see the the info on salt baths and had started a treatment of Myxazin. I never really measured them but Foley was about 9-10 inches and Axel was about an inch or so longer.

What a blow David. Sounds like 15 years makes an axolotl pretty old - and maybe they just couldn't fight this last battle. We lost our 2 year old male axie the other day and we're now trying really hard to hatch about 30 of his embryos.

Yeah, I think age was a large contributing factor. Sorry to hear about your axie but good luck with hatching his embryos. Both mine were female (I worked this out as I got more into reading about axolotls after getting them) so I had no real plans for breeding (I also suspect this added to their longevity a bit). How many do you expect to hatch?