Illness/Sickness: Rose in the fridge

Hello there, any help greatly appreciated here. I have a really sick Axolotl called Rose, dont know is she is a girl but sick none the less. First started about 2 months ago not eating and hiding from the other 2 axolotl, ( I bought them all together as they were in a really dingy tank not being looked after ) they now live in a 500gallon tank with a filter and sand substrate. I do not use a light and they get fed frozen blood worms. Rose just got smaller and smaller then I noticed a sore on her side and it didnt heal then it got white and fuzzy so I took her out of the tank and fridged her for 6 days then gave her salt baths once a day for another 3 days while she was still being fridged.
The sore has since got bigger and also she has a rotty fuzzy white patch on her head now I am adding Melafix into her clean water every day and putting her back in the chilled water to the fridge after every salt bath.
I am very sad that she is not getting better, she is in a limbo rotty sort of stage I am at a loss as to what to do now...She hasnt eaten anything for about a month! shall I keep on salt bathing and water changing with the Melafix? or shall I take her out? Last time I took her out and put her in a tank by herself it got worse! and she got really fungusy and smelly. So I put her in clean bottled water and back in the fridge. Please any help.

Could you post some photos? It sounds like Rose may need veterinary attention. Whilst she is in the fridge, it is unlikely she will eat as the cold temperature slows her metabolism down. I would stop giving her salt baths and melafix, especially given these treatments have not been effective. I would contact a vet in your area if you have access to one.

I have taken her to the vets, they took a swab told me it was a bacterial infection with some fungus and said salt bath. They said they could inject her with antibiotics and they wanted to give me some to do the same but I have never done this before and I am afraid of injuring her or killing her? The vets is a 45 min drive one way. I am thinking maybe they I should ask if they could keep her to do the injections, But would they be able to keep her fridged? they didnt seem overly confident. They are an exotic animal vet that specializes in reptiles and amphibians but they had never seen an axolotl.

She looks really sad and sore. the white fuzzy now is red around it and she has a blister looking thing on her head. I always change her water with bottled water that is stored at the same temperature she is. And salt bath her in bottled water the same temperature. I just don't know how much more of this she can take.

She doesn't look good. I would follow the advice given by the vet and go ahead with the antibiotic injections. They should be able to show you how to do the injections.

Another suggestion is to put her in pure black tea water - black tea has strong anti inflammatory, anti bacterial properties. I have read studies indicating they can be kept in this water for long periods with no adverse affect. It's 1 tea bag per 10 U.S. gallons of water.

Also, I had a similar problem with an Axolotl I was deceived into purchasing whilst in terrible condition. Anyway, a portion of her tail was rotted off with exposed bone!

I found that coaxing her to eat and keeping her in reasonably warm water helped. Her tail injury was mucusy and fuzzy looking, like yours here. When I had her in cold water it seemed to only worsen her condition but warmer water (19 Celsius) perked her right up. I use reverse osmosis filtered water with great success.

I fed her frozen brine shrimp, which is very palatable and nutritious. I used feeding tongs to bring it to her mouth and with wiggling and rubbing I coaxed her to eat. This helped a lot

Good luck! Let us know how the antibiotics go.

Poor little Axolotl of yours


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Sadly little Rose lost her battle today she put up a good fight of almost two months of fridging salt baths and antibiotics but to no avail. RIP little Lotl

Sorry to hear Rose didn't pull through .