Some advice for me on axolotls

Ok first off I got my axolotl 9 months ago, when he was just fully grown, and he has been fine and never sick and always active and eating normally and responds to hand movements.

Now he hasn't eaten for a week which is very unlike him, he's lost the use of his front legs and is unresponsive to me moving my hands around which usually means I will feed him. He'll normally looks up and swims to the top to grab the food from my fingers. I feed him pellets brought from the pet shop.

I took him to the vet and the guy said there isn't alot he could do because it was not an external injury. He said he was sick and a virus may have gotten into his system. He eventually decided that I put him into a solution of antibiotics everyday for 1 hour and if he shows no signs of improvement in 5 days that I should bring him back and that he will possibly be put down.

I love my axolotl so I looked up on the internet on sick axolotls but on every treatment page I could find only discussed external problems. I thought I should come back here as I had already registered here a while ago and see what you guys think about the situation and if you could fill in any blanks because I really don't know what's going to happen to the little guy.



(Message edited by cake on December 15, 2005)

What are the temperatures there? If it's hot, they do become listless. It's not unusual at all for axolotls to refuse food once in a while. They can go up to a month or more without eating.

Using antibiotics without vet supervision is dangerous. Have you read the list of safe medications on www.axolotl.org yet?

Yes I was using one that is used alot in axolotls and it's not hot here.

He died this morning though. I'll miss him alot. My dad reckoned it might have a genetical type thing and that there was something wrong in his brain..?

im guessing it was those antibiotics... in nz its pretty damn rare for a vet to know anything about them so most likely he just gave it to you cause he didnt know what else to do

I'm a fourth year vet student and feel the need to defend my future profession here.
So far in my studies (which are almost finished) we've had one lecture on herp medicine and axolotls weren't even mentioned once.
So I guess unless the vet has a special interest in amphibians, he/she can extrapolate knowledge from other species (we mostly learn about mammals here) and hope that axolotls work in a similar way to them.
Please don't blame the vet for not knowing much about axies. Pretty much all my axie knowledge comes from reading the threads on this forum.

I promise once I graduate I'll keep up to date on axie medicine so I can properly treat sick axies

Cheers for understanding, Steffi

No one blames the vets for their ignorance on amphibians at all. It's just that, they usually DON'T know about amphibians because it's just not taught. Hopefully the vet schools will catch up though, and realize that amphibs are becoming more and more popular. Most people see amphibs as 'disposable' pets though. It takes a lot of leg work to find a vet who has any idea about medicating amphibs.

Cheers to you, and hopefully you can influence some of your classmates with herplove.

Actually it is not profitiable for the drug companies to test the various treatments on herps (including amphibians) as a result those vets that are interested tend to extrapolate treatments with herps and if they have time record and publish them. This data then ends up in some of the vet journals and then into books like Amphibian Medicine and Captive Husbandry.

If you have an idea what is wrong and a good reference source to provide (or a vet that is willing to consult) then the vet doesn't have to have prior experience in treating amphibians in particular or amphibians in general as you can bring in the literature or they can consult with the vets at a Zoo with a good herp collection.
Typically most people do not go out of the way to develop this sort of relationship with thier vet. They simply call them up and ask if they treat herps and then complain when they say no. Sometimes if you call up and ask for an appointment to talk to the vet before there is a crisis and come in with the information, a different scenario develops.

Steffi have you looked into internships at a Zoo for more exotic experience? I know that a number of Zoos in the USA accept vet interns (my employer does this).

Ed

Hey thanks for all the info, I appreciate it. My axolotl looked like he was going to cark it because he had lost the use of his front legs and it all just happened really fast. The vet said that the antibiotics he was going to give him were used alot in amphibians but I'm not sure if it sped up the process of him dying or not but you learn these things as you go along.

Being a vet specialising in amphibious animals would be a fascinating job.