HELP: Floating, Not Eating and Swimming Weird

Hello there... new to posting on this site. I have had my little (not that he's little anymore) yella fella for about a year now. In the last week he has stopped eating. It's rather hot here and I have been doing my best to keep the temperature to around 22c or below, it's quite difficult though. I have three axies. The yella fella stopped eating after I got my second one, he did this for about 4 days and then started again. I recently got a third axie and this time the yella one has stopped eating again (now over a week). He's also now floating around heaps on the surface and swimming kind of weird. His back legs don't seem to be working as well as they normally do and sometimes he has little spasm movements. Also the colour of his skin seems to have more of a reddish tinge to it.

I'm really worried that this is some fatal disease as I absolutely love my axe man and would be deva}stated if he departed my company.

Diet normally consists of that beef/heart stuff. I also bought some meal worms recently, he looked at them but didn't eat (the others LOVE them, little piggies), I also tried a garden worm, which he guzzled into his mouth but then spat out again. Every now and then he will take some of the food I offer to him but then he spits it out. I'm so worried this is something I can't fix.

Does anyone have any ideas... please help.

Thanks so much.}

(Message edited by squealie on November 22, 2004)

Hi Celia welcome to the group nice to have you here.

Ok your 'yella fella'. Although been having some discussion on the matter I am not convinced that beef heart is that good a diet. When i have fed it I find that bolus and floating do occur from time to time. But on a diet of earthworms and pellets I never see these symptoms. Suggest you try some more earthworms - smaller or cut-up.

Ok lets get your yella fella down now. Suggest you put in a seperate tank/container and lower the water level so the he is closer to base. This help reduce stress. I try and put a few weeds in too so he has something againdt his back as well. It's possible that he has ingested some gravel or substrate (or is just constipated) and is having a little difficulty passing it. I would guess the reddish tint is due to stress. But if you think it's more serious, try a salt bath, it won't harm.

Beef heart is a BIG thing here. Every frozen food is at least partly, if not mostly made of beef heart. The only things I've found without it are bloodworms and brine shrimp. Not much selection, which I find really frustrating. I've always used frozen foods, but have never once fed beef heart- squid, krill, glassworms, bloodworms, frozen spirulina/brineshrimp cubes, everything but the beef, because none of our foods contained it! Out here, it seems to be the only thing anyone feeds. Even pre-prepared "goldfish dinner" and "discus dinner" packs contain mainly beef heart, and those fish definately aren't carnivores!

I might try to find some salmon pellets here, but right now I'm feeding earthworms, "turtle dinner" and bloodworms. If you can get the frozen cubes of "turtle dinner" Celia, it's largely made up of fish and shrimp, with beef heart being at the bottom of the list of ingredients instead of the top. I'm not sure of your stores sell the same foods as here, but the frozen dinners here don't have ingredients listed. I had to write to the manufacturer to find out!

My axies love the Turtle dinner, and I've never had trouble with anyone floating. I've set up a worm breeding compost bin, also something you could do. Like Mik already said, you should try phasing out the beef heart and if possible feed them things closer to what they would have eaten in the wild. Mine both still go after daphnia, even though they're quite big to be living off them, I still dump some in as a treat. It's fun to watch them chase the little things!

Just saw the note about the beef heart products in Aust and went over to the pet store to check it out, as I know they have Turtle Dinner there.

Also there they have a list of the ingredients listed in order of amount, on the fridge door, the turtle dinner still had beef heart/liver listed first so I got the frozen brine shrimp (what a mess) and some blood worms.

Yella Fella is still not eating, he didn't even look up at the shrimp. I will dig up some more earth worms later. At the moment he is in a small tub (should I make it a bigger one?) and the water is covering him (about double the height when laid out flat), I put some weeds from the fish tank in there (as the axie tank doesn't have any real ones, I can't keep them alive - can anyone recommend a plant that can live in their tanks and they like? I've been using fakes so far). He seems to be a bit more chilled out, I've also put the oxygen stone in there.

I have bought some salt to give a salt bath and will update on his progress.

Just thought I would post again so Trip could see that turtle dinner may not be as minimal in beef heart as first thought. Here's hoping they are just listed in alphabetical or something...

Cheers and will let you know more later.
Fingers crossed for me fella... he's so adorable.

Dang it. So much for the list of ingredients I got! I'll go to the store again tomorow and see if they have the same list your store did... now I'm going to have to find something else to feed!

As for plants, java moss, hornwort, any anubias species, banana plants (IF you have a lot of lighting), java fern, most any slow growing low light plants will do well in the cold water of an axolotl tank. If you see something at the store you like, find out the scientific name from the store and do a search online for care requirements. Find some "beginner" plants to start with.

A good site to start with:

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/PlantedTksSubWebIndex/AquariumGardenSubWebIndex.html

Hope that helps, thanks for the heads up on the turtle dinner!

Okay kids... I've done the salt bath... I used 8.5 grams and it was about 2-3 litres of water that he was in. I left him in there for about 10 minutes. I've realised that is possibly the lower end of the solution now (from reading that salt thing - I'm tired though I may have read it wrong).

Is it safe to give him another salt bath today, perhaps a stronger dosage one for 30 mins, do the maximum they recommend?

He's mostly down the bottom now which is a good sign but his gills and his extremities (tail, feet) are getting this kind of grey tinge to them. If I were to self diagnose I'd say he seems to either be losing circulation to those areas or something like that.

I will do all the appropriate nitrate, ammonia and Ph tests today because he seems to have only improved minimally (or does it take a while to show he's better).

I still don't think he's eaten but I'm not positive. When I took him out of the container last night there was a squished meal worm (kind of like a passed undigested one). I didn't put any meal worm in the container but he also hadn't been taking any from me. I did accidentally drop one or two in the tank. I'm praying that he found them and ate them. So, here's hoping he's actually eating.

Little G.I. Jane was just laying on top of him, like giving him a hug, I hope she's just saying everything is okay and not goodbye.

Thanks for the help folks.

Mealworms can damage axolotls internally if you don't break the mealworm's jaws before feeding. You can salt bath the animal twice or three times a day (in fact, twice is more advisable than once). You can also put a small amount of salt in the water it's in all the time - this will help keep fungus at bay. Put about a level-to-a-heaped teaspoonful (4-6 grams) in 10 litres of water. That's perfectly safe. Good luck.

John,

How do I break their jaw? Is that the bit at the top where the little feet type things seem to be too and the darker area is, the end with more grip I guess? I only just discovered these little fellas so I'm not quite sure what's what.

Cheers
Celia

Yes, it's at that end of the body - if you stick your finger at the front, the mealworm should try to nip you. Use a forceps or tweezers to break the jaws.

Here's a better idea, which is a lot less messy: don't feed axolotls with mealworms.

I'm afraid Yella Fella passed away last night at the vet's. We just gave him a little funeral in the backyard and a nice plot. I'm going to buy a nice yellow plant to put over his grave.

I now have to ensure that my other two don't go the same way. Wish me luck all.

C

Sorry to hear

The plant's a good idea- he'll be able to nourish it and help it grow so he'll have a really beautiful memorial.

Hope all goes well with your other two, it's always tough losing an animal you care about! Did the vet have any advice for you, or ideas what caused the trouble?

It's a fungus and two kinds of parasite... I put some info on the VET's in Syd post.

I'm fully in two minds and sure I'll cop a flaming for this but this Sydney Vet (who is one of the best for Axies in Syd) reckons he has used malakite in really low doses to successfully treat this fungus in Axies.

I thought Yella Fella was sad and lonely so I got him a bigger tank and two friends... turns out one of them probably killed him so that was a bit harsh. Now to make sure they don't die. Just scared about using a treatment that is just totally NOT recommended on here.... confuzzled.

Well, I suppose you can use it, but in very low doses compared to those recommended for fish. Personally, I wouldn't take the risk - there are safe alternatives.

I have treated fungus in axolotls several times over the last number of years (not recently though) and I have always found salt to be sufficient (salt bath and some salt present in the tank water all the time).

I'm trying the salt bath now because I'm terrified of killing my others. I just adore them so much. Also the temperature here is killer at the moment, their tank got to 25 today, poor things, I have bottles with ice in it now, if only someone had invented an a/c for a tank, just like the heater but reverse, I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard....

Also I thought the mecheurochrome(sp?) might be good too, is that recommended for these things, they have parasites too. (????) But the vet said to treat one thing at a time, I thought if something treated both though....

My little girl just had a salt bath and the little bit of fungus on her head came off so that's a good sign I guess.

Thanks for all your help on this.... to everyone. Most appreciated. If only I'd realised about Yella Fella in time, maybe I could have saved all of them.

RIP Yella Fella .....

Celia, there are aquarium chillers out there, though they are VERY expensive and usually made for bigger tanks. They're used quite a bit in saltwater reef tanks to keep them from overheating in the summer months.

There are also a number of websites with DIY plans for chillers, using things like modified mini-fridges. I'm on my way out the door now, but I have some pages bookmarked that I can post later if anyone's interested. Alternately, why not a small, portable air-conditioning unit? I'm looking around for one for my axie room, and there were quite a few cheap ones (~100$) in the Trading Post here that sounded like they were worth looking at. I'm struggling to keep the tank at 20ish (it got to 21 today!) with the temperatures outside in the high 30's.

Let me know if you come up with some kind of creative cooling solution. There's got to be a better way than fans and ice!

Temperature is your main problem right now. Remember, putting the tank on the <u>floor</u> in the lowest part of the house should drop it 2 or 3 degrees or more.

Using ice bottles is a tricky thing: if the temperature changes too much too quickly, it's worse than keeping them at a stable, if somewhat high, temperature. Typically, ice bottles cause the temperature to crash into the teens, but once they thaw out the temperature climbs back into the mid to late 20s. Then you put another ice bottle back in and the same happens again. This is a quick way to kill an axolotl. So, if you want to use ice bottles, do it carefully. Do not use them on small tanks. For a large tank, using several smaller bottles in succession is probably safer than one large one and then another large one. And be prepared to switch bottles before the first one thaws out completely.

Stick with the salt for a few days and see how they do. Treating them for the fungus with the salt is not going to be successful for long if you don't do something about the temperature.

I thought as much. I use several small bottles on a rotating system. I have a 4ft tank and I use two of them. I try to keep them at both ends of the tank but circulating and I watch the temp to make sure it doesn't drop too quickly. At the moment it's only gone done 1 degree in about 1/2 hr or so... is that too much? I usually try and take it down 2 degrees or so and then wait a while and do so again... I'm trying to get it below 20 and bloody well keep it there... sheesh. Nightmarish.

My other question. I have read lots about letting the water sit to remove the chlorine etc from the water. Is it okay to use one of those water conditioners and then to put the water in the tank, the conditioners remove nitrates, nitrites, chloramites and chlorines, yeah I think that's all of them. This is what I have been doing but I'm worried that I should be doing more.

Cheers

Hi John,

Same question as Celia: How much is too much fluctuation in temperature? I've been using 3 small coke bottles to ice the tank, rotating them as you said, doing one after the other has melted, instead of all at once. At night, the temperature naturally falls to 17-18 degrees- I'm using the ice during the peak afternoon heat to keep the tank from rising above 20, though it did see 21 today. Is a swing of 4 degrees everyday too much? I haven't seen any signs of stress in my ladies yet, but it's only been a week of this heat. I'm going away tomorow for 9 days and leaving my boyfriend's mom to care for them. She has instructions to do as I've been doing. Is there anything I could do better?

Nearly forgot: DIY chiller plans

http://www.aloha.net/~hqf/indexdonschiller.htm

It seems kind of complicated to me, but I've wanted to try making one for a while. The next time I see a mini-fridge at a garage sale I think I'll give it a go!

It's not so much the amount of change. The three things you need to worry about are:<ul>[*]How sudden the change is (shouldn't take place in less than 30-60 mins) <LI>How stable the new temperature is - it shouldn't fluctuate <LI>How often the temperature changes in 24 hours[/list]There are no absolutes here - you just have to minimise the stress caused by these factors as best you can. I have a very harsh view of this: I reckon that if you can't maintain stress-free conditions for 360 out of 365 days of the year, you shouldn't be keeping axolotls. That's why I didn't keep them from 2000 to 2003, because I lived in a house that was too warm during the summer.