Help with my male N.v.v.

Stanley has not been eating for the past 5 days, and yesterday I noticed he had flakes of unshed skin hanging off of him----checked pH and nitrate/nitrite levels, everything all right, except the pH was a little high and I naively used the pH decreaser stuff (and afterwards read on caudata.org in an article that this is NOT good to do). Well, today he was lying on his side at the bottom of the water and so I fished him out and at first quarantined him in some Bed-a-Beast fiber dampened with water---I got the Bed-a-Beast from the waxworm tank----then I thought it would be cleaner to just keep him on dampened paper towels until I figured something out as to what the heck is going on, and in the meantime I saw two white worms about the length of 2 pinheads crawling around on the paper towel. I don't think they could be baby waxworms from the substrate, since none of mine have morphed into moths? So I destroyed the worms, rinsed Stanley off, and put him in a fresh bed of dampened paper towel---what do I do next? What do you think this worm is? Thanks in advance for any advice.
I have all kinds of antibiotics for fungal and parasitic problems, but don't want to use this until I know for sure what the problem is..

Also, here is a photo of him, and his nuptual pads are now white, as are the tips of his front fingers??

Ok, looks like the worms are indeed coming from the substrate....here is his quarantine state; should I do anything else?

What was/is the pH? As far as treating the newt, I don't know of anything else you can do. Notos are temperamental buggers.

Hey Jen, thanks for writing, the pH before my dastardly administration of the "Lowering pH" solution was 8.4, and afterwards it was 7.1. Have you ever had a noto mysteriously get ill like this?

I think that solution really harmed it. I think those worms are not a big deal. But have you tried any treatment? How long have you have that newt? How big is it? Where did you get it? More information might help.
Do you think the white stuffs are fungus infestion?

his back legs look a bit swollen,can he move them? s.o.p. for my vet would be an antibiotic as a prophylatic. he will not eat till he feels better. these guys are notoriously difficult and fall ill for unknown reasons. has he passed anything since you isolated him?

Thanks guys for the posts---he passed today; he did end up getting a little bloated and his eyes were bloodshot, so I suspect kidney damage---I had him for over 2 years, got him from the campground pond, and he was 4 1/2" long. He had an adventurous character, more so than my other newts, and he had the famous 5-fingered right hand. Did he suffer, do you think? I know it is probably impossible for you to answer that question. I didn't want to euthanize him, hoping that he would come out of it---he had not passed any waste for the whole time he was sick, either. Thank you again everybody for your help; this whole thing was such a surprise, dangit.

Hi Leanne, need to figure out why your tank pH was so high to begin with. I suspect that this is MIGHT be the reason he had trouble. I've had bad experiences with Notos that I suspect (without much evidence, I admit) might have been due to high pH. I would like to ask you to do some additional pH measurements, both to help you sort out the problem, and also for my information. Could you please measure:

1. Your tank pH right now. Those "up" and "down" solutions usually have only a temporary effect, so it may have bounced back.

2. The pH of your dechlorinated/aged tap water before it goes into the tank.

3. The pH of the pond that they live in.

Also, what kind of pH test kit do you use? Most of them aren't any good at measuring above about 7.8. And do you have anything in your tank that might raise pH (like cement, certain kinds of rocks, shells, etc.)?

Well, I did have a decorative aquatic "house" in there, which I removed after the newt seemed sickly---could that have raised the pH? There are a few rocks in there too, but no limestone as far as I know. It all happened 2 weeks after I got the new female from the pond. Here is the info on the water test I just did, the spring water test in the middle is the water I use to fill the tank~~thanks for your help!

Here's a closer view of the test strips---
1. Tank water
2. Spring water
3. Pond water

Can you give a close-up of the piece of paper with the color-coded scales? I can't tell for sure which spot corresponds to which test. Is the first spot at the top pH, with white being low and dark pink being high?

Test strips are notoriously unreliable, sometimes because the chemistry of the water messes them up and sometimes because they are past expiration or have gone bad because they haven't been stored in the proverbial "cool dry place".

It is also possible that the new female brought in some kind of germs that hadn't been in the tank before.

I think you're right about the female----it all happened after I got her from the pond (and about a cup of water from the pond as well, with daphnia for the newts to eat). The strip from top to bottom is:

Nitrate and nitrite are both quite OK in the tank. But for both the spring water and tank water, the hardness, alkalinity, and pH are all higher than you find in the pond. If that pH reading for the spring water is right, you might want to get a different brand (if that is what you are using in your tank), and/or mix it with distilled water.

Wow---ok, thanks for the advice, I will see if another brand will work.

NVV have very fat back legs when they are males, paris, to let you know. Also, that doesn't look like a NVV as it doesn't have as much red spots. Looks like a subspecies. I am not quite sure which one, though.