Question: Injury from eating??

Valentine is a large 2+ year old albino axolotl.

I offered her an earthworm a few minutes ago and she took it quickly and wrestled with it for a bit. I don't think it was overly large for her but when she had it mostly swallowed and just the tail end poking out of her mouth, I noticed a little bit of blood flowing out into the water from just behind her gills on one side. She swallowed the worm just fine but the flow of blood definitely became heaver and seemed to be coming from a small section of her gill filaments. It continued for several minutes and then stopped.

I'm trying to figure out exactly what happened. Do you think maybe she wrestled too aggressively with the worm and burst a blood vessel or something? When my husband saw her bleeding he was freaked out and I have to admit, I was too. I'm reasonably sure the blood wasn't coming from the worm, as it seemed to be coming from the tip of one gill.

I'm going to stick with offering her much smaller worms for a while just in case.
She seems perfectly fine now, no more blood but man that scared the wits out of me!

Has anyone else had this happen??

edit: yes, it was definitely HER blood and not from the worm. I found the source. It was indeed the end of a gill filament or two that was bleeding.

Did your axie hit its gills on anything when it was wrestling?

My axie wrestles large worms all the time and never seen that before.

BethanyKate said:

Did your axie hit its gills on anything when it was wrestling?

Click to expand...

Nope.

Honestly i have no idea. I suppose if your axie is okay then it probably wasnt too serious