Death from new food?

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Shiro

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Hi everyone,

I have a mystery. My mom is taking care of two axolotls in another state, and called me today with strange news. She has two leucistic axolotls kept in separate "critter keeper" tanks without substrate or filters, just plastic plants and hiding places. She changes the water twice a week, and treats it with amquel and salt. They have been fed HBH salamander bites since they were larvae (2 and 3 years respectively).

Yesterday, they were given food from a new container of salamander bites. They were completely healthy. Today, she found one of them dead (completely white) and the other barely moving. Both their tanks had a film of white "goo" floating at the top of the water.

Was this an allergic reaction? Is the white goo sloughed skin? Please help me figure this out!
 
So she added salt to the axie tank? I think that's at least be one of the problems since they need to live in fresh water rather than salt water.
 
She added a small amount of aquarium salt during water changes, the same amount or slightly more than you would use for freshwater fish. Axolotls actually need the water to be slightly salty (they are kept in special kinds of salts at laboratories and in zoos). But the amount of salt hadn't changed since they were young larvae (before they had full hind legs) or between yesterday and today.
 
Shiro said:
She added a small amount of aquarium salt during water changes, the same amount or slightly more than you would use for freshwater fish. Axolotls actually need the water to be slightly salty (they are kept in special kinds of salts at laboratories and in zoos). But the amount of salt hadn't changed since they were young larvae (before they had full hind legs) or between yesterday and today.
Click to expand...

This won't help you with your problem, but my Axolotls do not get any salt added to their water apart from having fungus - and they are doing fine for more than 10 years now (the same with my freshwater fish).

Did you look for the expiration date on the new package of food? Are there any changes with the ingredients? And (since I do not know this brand of food) did you feed the same kind and size of it for several years now, from larvae-stage to adulthood? (Just out of curiosity...)
 
Hello Shiro,

This added salt method that you are referring to is called Holtfreter's solution and is commonly utilised by the Ambystoma genetic stock centre. I too keep my axolotls in reasonably hard water, but the salts that you add to the tank will have different effects on the tank. Therefore, it is advisable that you use the correct salts.

Regarding, the sudden death of your axolotls- could it be because some chemicals (i.e. domestic house cleaning products) were accidently introduced into the tank? This is a sure and quick way to killing axolotls.

Jay.
 
She is probably using aquarium salt, which is OK. I would use LESS than the amount recommended for freshwater fish, but I can't argue with 2-3 years of good health.

Unless there was some other accidental occurrence (chemicals or adding the wrong measure of salt in the water) it certainly does sound like a bad batch of Newt Bites. There are all kinds of things that could have gotten into them (remember the melamine that got into dog/cat food?). You could try complaining to the HBH people, but that won't do your axolotls any good:-( I have no idea what the white goo was - if it were skin, it seems like it would be all over the water, not just floating.
 
this is really sad
unfortunately this sort of thing does happen, as the others have said if nothing else has changed and all the parameters are correct then definately take it up with the food manufacturer.
:(
 
Thanks for reminding me about the melamine, Jennewt. I just went to the HBH site, and saw that they had indeed recalled a whole bunch of their fishfood due to melamine risk. They had not recalled the newt bites however - but usually companies dont issue recalls unless someone reports a problem. I will definitely be alerting them.

I'm ordering new food from the Axolotl Colony to be shipped to my mom. The newt bites used to be equivalent to the rangen feed - but I see that HBH reformulated its recipe. If it wasn't melamine, it could easily have been any of these new ingredients.

I will post the batch number on here later so other people can watch out (the bottle doesn't have any information other than that).
 
If it's possible to not keep your animals in critter keepers and in some sort of a filtered tank their is less chance of something going wrong.
 
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