Gill fungus? Second opinions please?

We've had our axie for a few weeks now and up till today everything has been going swimmingly! She's a very nice pet. Today however we noticed something strange about her gills and I thought I should get a second opinion from people who know better than me before I go doing anything about it.



This is the current setup - the light is on for about 6 hours a day.



I didn't think it looked cottony, more chunky, like grains of the sand she's on, but I see that it does a little bit, and some of her gill filaments around the affected area are bloodshot as well. Those 2 gills were always a little deformed, like a previous tankmate had a go at her, but it seems that something has taken the opportunity to get in there and establish itself.

Some background:

we bought the axie after we had been cycling a small (34L) tank for a week and a half. Readings were all quite good, the nitrogen cycle was coming along nicely. She was in the small tank for 2 weeks before we decided to get a 91 cm tank as the small one was just too small. So we got the large tank, cycled it with some feeder goldfish from the same aquarium and after 4 weeks, transferred her in, and the goldfish out into the small tank.

The temp of the small tank was usually between 17 - 21 degrees C, and the large tank was sitting around 20 degrees.

We bought a chiller (after a week of worrying about the temp) which is currently hooked up to the filter with the spray bar pointed at the wall so she's getting no current whatsoever, and the tank is now very stable at 17 degrees. (the chiller hadn't been used in about a year and we gave it a good rinse with aquarium water before hooking it up.)

She's been on a diet of frozen bloodworms, but we're looking into setting up an earthworm nest so we can feed those instead. A couple of days ago, before we noticed the fungus, I put half a dozen or so live blackworms in to tempt her, but she wasn't really that interested in them, ate a couple and then we had to fish the rest out. She does LOVE her daily bloodworms though, gobbles them right up, so she's not off her food. I haven't seen one of her poops in there for about 4 days tho. She's mostly very active, swimming up and down and running face first into the glass at top speed, just going about her business.

Hubby just did a water test
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 7.5 ppm (a lot lower than it was)
pH around 7.4


So um, there, the life story of Lottie the Axolotl! Any suggestions on what is happening with her gills and how we can treat it without stressing her out too much would be appreciated

Hey.

Sorry no opinion as I'm sorta new to axolotls myself. Just wanted to say that I also would be interested in others opinions as I noticed very similar things on my axi's gills.

Also - great tank setup! looks really cool.

Max

I dunno either. Interested to find out. The Tank looks REALLY nice though. :happy:

I would say yes it is, but you could try to get it off with a cotton swab, and get a better idea of what the stuff is.

Ok cool, we can give that a try tomorrow. She can be a bit skittish when she's touched or startled so hopefully it won't stress her too much. Might be a 2 person job

Hi,

Great pics of her gills. I'm not totally convinced that's fungus either. Eric's method will help as if it is fungus, it will come off with the swab and then prepare to give her a salt bath.

How long have her gills been like this? Fungus is pretty agressive and spreads fairly quickly.

Try not to stress her out too terribly. See if you can put her in a smaller container and try to make sure she's calm before attempting the cotton swab.

Thanks Shannon, we only noticed the problem today, it's not apparent in recent pics we have of her before we moved her to the new tank, and yeah we do spend quite a lot of time watching her (what can I say, she's fascinating!) and I can't recall seeing this before today. She doesn't seem to be out of sorts, the gills aren't flapping any more than they usually do. I think before we attempt anything with cotton swabs we will have to pick up some aquarium salt, just in-case a bath is needed.

It looks more like gill damage than fungus, however you are doing the right thing by getting ready in case it does turn out to be fungus and spreads.

Definately suggest keeping an eye on him for now

Good luck!
Mel

I am leaning towards gill fungus on this one. If I were in your shoes, I would do a ten minute salt bath using 2 teaspoons of aquarium salt per liter of water. Gill fungus, even that affecting very young axies, can clear up surprisingly fast with a few salt baths. If your axie seems to really dislike being in the salt bath, you can always reduce the concentration by adding fresh, de-chlorinated water until they seem more comfortable.

I like Shizeric's idea, but I'm not sure if that would help me determine what it is. Is the idea that it will grow back if it is fungus, and it won't if it is random debris?

I was thinking it would help determine the consistency of the stuff. If soft and cottony, it's probably fungus. If it's hard and crusty, probably something else.

True.

It looks pretty soft and fluffy to me...

Yeah, me too, but Seona wrote "I didn't think it looked cottony, more chunky, like grains of the sand she's on". Perhaps they have a better view of it, and clarification would be great.

I have inspected her very closely today and I actually suspect she has a bacteria, there are bits flaking off her all over this morning, like she's shedding. She's still eating fine, but I did a bit of googling and think we might have a columnaris infection. I know they occur at sudden changes of temperature, and she has had quite a few temp fluctuations over the last couple of weeks, unavoidable, unfortunately but we were hoping to dodge this problem with the chiller


You can see the flaky filmy stuff, and the white spotty stuff that's been there a few days that we thought was sand, and the damage that's been done to her gill overnight

More chunky pieces on the gills today. Breakfast was a violent affair and there was much vigorous munching, so there were bits flying off her in all directions, so we managed to suck a piece of whatever was on her gills out after if fell off. I think we will take it to our aquarium today and get our local fish guy to take a look at it and see if he confirms my thoughts or not.

well we took some photos to a couple of different aquarium people today, the first guy wasn't 100% sure, but then he doesn't have a lot of experience with axies, however he called a couple of local breeders and got the salt bath advice from one, and methylene blue from another, and then the second lady we spoke to used to breed them with her husband and she took one look at the pics and said Yep it's bacterial and her gills are dying so salt bath! She gave us very specific instructions, a slightly higher concentration of white sea salt for a shorter period of time, so we've followed it to the letter and a lot of the flaky film came off in the process, along with the gunk on her gills.

She was a bit stressed out by the process but was surprisingly calm in the bath, she did a few laps of the container and at the 2min 30 mark we took her out again and back to her big tank. I think catching her with the net was more stressful than the salt solution. I think we were more stressed by it than she was

Anyway now we will see how she goes, moniter her closely for the next couple of days, hopefully the next update will be a good one!

Manifest said:

well we took some photos to a couple of different aquarium people today, the first guy wasn't 100% sure, but then he doesn't have a lot of experience with axies, however he called a couple of local breeders

I think we were more stressed by it than she was

Click to expand...

That was really nice of the guy in the shop and itsn't that always the case when it comes to our animals

You may want to do daily salt baths until you are certain the illness has cleared up.

The lady we spoke to recommended against the salt bath more than once a week, but yeah, we're keeping a very close eye on her and will get more advice if it's needed

I think the substrate might be irritating her skin a little tonight, she's been hanging face down off the plant leaves all evening, and just now this is what we found!


Funny little thing. We're mostly leaving the light off, she seems more comfortable without it. Also funny how her colouring changes under a different light tint, in the small tank there is a daylight bulb and she was bright yellow!

Glad its working out alright.

This has been heaps interesting as the symptoms you describe are almost identical to my axi! First I notice the funny things on his gills, then the flaking/shedding skin! crazy. Our temps haven't fluctuated all that much though - only 17-19C.

Attached is a picture of the flaking skin - similar to what you've noticed? (couldn't get a shot of the gills as he was facing the wrong way.) Sorry If I'm thread hijacking - I can a start a new thread if you prefer?

So how exactly did the salt bath work? (amount of salt, time in there, frequency, other instructions). As I'm thinking I'll be doing the same soon.

Max

That is quite similar actually only ours had it all over her head, under her chin and all down her back on either side of her dorsal fin. None at all at the moment and she's pretty chipper this morning, walking back and forth at the glass looking at me. She just had breakfast and she was that hungry that she made a beeline for the worm block as it dropped and caught it halfway instead of waiting till it was on the floor, and now she's sifting around for the rest. No sign of the grey film and no sign of the chunky stuff in her gills at all so hopefully we're out of the woods for now! I am also gradually increasing her tank temperature (really slowly) on the same advice. I had a few moments of "what if we're overreacting?? What if she stresses out so much we lose her, or she stops eating or arrgh! Stress!" but she's completely back to her old self today so I think we did the right thing

There's info on this site on salt bathing, the recommendation I've seen here is 2 teaspoons of salt per litre of water and a 10 minute bath.

However, the advice we got was a 3% solution and for absolutely no longer than 3 minutes, absolutely no more than once a week (and then, only if necessary) and keep a very very close eye and be prepared to pull the animal out. We were told to use white crystal salt which is just evaporated seawater with *no* additives like anti caking or iodine. The higher concentration for a shorter time is kind of like ripping off a band-aid, as opposed to taking it off one hair at a time!

So we did that, because the constant netting and moving is also not fun for us or her, but at exactly 2 min 20 we got the net ready and pulled her out at 2 min 30 because it *is* stressful and any longer than necessary and you will kill the axie. She was a little wrinkly when we put her back into her big tank but that disappeared in a couple of moments and so far, so good. Much of the grey film came off in the bath. The salt burns off the outer layer, slime coat and bacteria/fungus and if left too long will burn off their gills. And it forces the slime coat to regenerate so you often see it used in very small solutions in freshwater tanks to reinforce the fish's immunity. I used to treat my siamese fighters with a half teaspoon of salt in a 5 litre tank to boost their slime coat and prevent them getting sick. Not recommended for axolotls though.

Anyway, the solution we worked out after a bunch of careful maths was 90 grams of salt to 3 litres of aquarium water. We also did a 30% water change and vacuumed the tank after the bath was done. And obviously, you discard the bath water.

I think that was everything!

This is she today. Just because my hubby is a good photographer, and she's a fairly willing subject!

Hi endempire,

In the latest photo you posted, the skin does not look like a fungus. It looks to me like shedding. I would not do salt baths, but rather tea baths to see if that helps. (Read about tea baths in a Caudata Culture article here, scroll down a bit to "Tea baths for axolotls".)

I don't know what could be causing shedding. Some shedding is normal and it is more visible on dark axolotls, but it isn't usually as much as what I see in the photo. I would first try the tea baths to see if that helps.

Are you dechlorinating your water or using any other type of treatment? What ar your water parameters (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, temperature)?

-Eva