Barnaby has fungus!

I fed him last night and didn't notice anything strange, but this morning I noticed he has white fluffy stuff on his gills, and his gills are looking a bit mangled. There's also a few little bits of white stuff on his plants. His water temperature has been around 14 degrees. What should I do to treat him? I'm going away on Monday for two weeks so I need really clear instructions to give the house sitter. And what could have caused this to appear?

P.S. I did look this up but it says cholrine water for some fungus and salt water for other fungus and I wasn't sure what kind of fungus Barnaby has.
P.P.S. I've taken him out of his tank and put him in the fridge. I went to take the fungus off with a Q-tip but it turns out the frantic swimming caused by the move shook it all off, so I just collected the fragments from the container. It's hard to tell, but he might possibly have a really light fuzzy white over his face, or it might just be the way the light hits his skin. Either way, it didn't come off when I touched it with the q-tip.
Now waiting to see if anyone knows if I should give him a salt bath or what?

id do a salt bath. i typically only have to do a single salt bath for the fungus to fall off and not come back.

Hi,

I´m not sure, if it´s only fungus. Your axie is quite thin and his gills are looking bad. What are your water conditions (ammonia, nitrite, PH) and what´s the temp? How often do you feed him and what? Is he eating fine?

I would do salt baths (2-3 tablesppon/l water) for 10 minutes and put him in the fridge. Take a look here: http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/salt.shtml

If saltbathing him won´t work after 3 days, I would take him to a vfet for a check-up. It could be an infection.

tina

Okay I'll go and buy some salt now. I'm wondering what I should do with his tank? Will I need to clean the whole thing out and re-cycle it? Or is there something I can do to get rid of the fungus in there without that?

He has been eating fine, I fed him last night and he took it right away. I tried to give him some this morning before putting him in the fridge because he doesn't eat in there, but he didn't take it (but that's not so abnormal, he usually only eats at night). He eats mainly beef heart cubes, with some salamander pellets.

The link doesn't say how often to do the salt baths, how often should it be? Once a day?

beefheart cubes aren´t a good diet for axies, better are earthworms (more nutritious), blackworms and sometimes critters.

You should do salt baths once - twice a day.

There´s no need to clean out the tank - maybe water change. Spores of fungus are permanent in the tank and only weak axies get fungus.

!

Right after I noticed the fungus I had to go away for two weeks on prac, but left very specific instructions to the house sitters and talked to them a few times while I was away. He has been in the fridge for 3 weeks now - for the first week he was getting a daily 15 minute salt bath with 20g uniodised rock salt dissolved in 2L water when his water was changed, for the next week he just got a daily water change (as the house sitter insisted he couldnt see any fungus). When I got home after the second week I found his gills absolutely covered in fungus, I don't know if that appeared suddenly since his morning water change or if he'd actually had it the whole time (but three different house sitters were sure it was gone, and I showed them pictures and everything).

Anyway, I pulled off what I could with a Q-tip and gave him a salt bath and it all came away, BUT other than the fungus coming back, there was another catastrophe. Something in the fridge obviously went haywire, because everything in the top few layers in the fridge was frozen solid. Luckily Barnaby's containers were in the bottom and so didn't freeze, but were sitting at 2 degrees celcius. I fiddled with the fridge's settings and the best I could manage was to keep it to 9 degrees. He was soo still when I came home, I thought he was dead, he has improved dramatically now that I brought the tempurature up to 9, but he is still majorly less active than the other times he's been in the fridge.

So for the past week I've been giving him one salt bath every day, and every day (or at least every second day) a little bit of fungus comes back. A couple of days ago I noticed the temperature of the fridge has dropped to 4 degrees (but it's still on it's warmest setting, stupid fridge), his tail has curled at the tip, and little bits of his gills are starting to fall off, so I changed to twice daily water changes and salt baths, and thicker towel insulation of his container, in hopes of keeping the water slightly warmer.

Why isn't he getting better! Why does the fungus keep coming back?!

So I thought maybe there was some kind of underlying infection making him vulnerable. I can not afford the $200 minimum consult fee of the only axolotl vet in the state, so I read up on this page: Axolotls - Health & Diseases and *cough* borrowed some Gentamicin from work (I'm a vet student, and I work at a vet). Except, I work at a horse vet, and this is horse-strength gent, so I feel uneasy about diluting it enough to inject, and decided I feel much safer with the bath option, especially when I don't even know if he has an infection. So instead of a salt bath this evening I gave him a bath in 2L water with 0.8mL 100mg/mL Gentamicin for 10 minutes (that link is a bit vague, but I assume they are referring to the small animal variant of 20mg/mL concentration). Although, the link is still so vague that I don't know how often I should repeat that.

Anyway, so I am getting a new fridge, but not until next Sunday. And basically, does anyone have any advice?? Is it likely that he has an infection along with his fungus, or something else? Does anyone have any experience with the gent? Is there anything I am doing wrong or anything else I could be doing?