Illness/Sickness: Something wrong with his bum bum?

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rosstxttpo

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Ross TxT-TPO
Hey,

Recently, we noticed our axolotl's cloacal area has started to look strange (pictures attached) and occasionally white fluff appears to come off it.

Can anyone shed any light on what this may be and what treatment is required.

We are worried about him because we love him so much.
 

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How old/big is your axolotl? If an adult, looks to be a female...

What are you feeding him/her? This looks to be a possible infection or maybe impaction. I would suggest fridging and it probably wanted hurt to have a vet take a look. If it is an infection, antibiotics will be needed.
 
dragonlady said:
How old/big is your axolotl? If an adult, looks to be a female...

What are you feeding him/her? This looks to be a possible infection or maybe impaction. I would suggest fridging and it probably wanted hurt to have a vet take a look. If it is an infection, antibiotics will be needed.
Click to expand...

Thanks for getting back to me.

He (Ive posted another few photos so you can judge) is about 4 years old. We feed him on frozen cubes of blood worm and he doesnt seem to have lost his appetite.

What does fridging him involve?
 

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He looks rather skinny to me. I think you should try and get him on earthworms, or feed him more.

Mel
 
Fridging means putting him in the fridge.
 
Thanks for the replies.

melfly said:
He looks rather skinny to me. I think you should try and get him on earthworms, or feed him more.

Mel
Click to expand...

So you do think that he is a he?

He gets fed one cube of frozen bloodworm every third night. We used to feed him more but cut it down for some reason.

Danni said:
Fridging means putting him in the fridge.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I figured that much. I more meant for how long? At what temperature? In what type of container?
 
This is a link to guide you on fridging :-

Axolotl Sanctuary

I am not sure what it is, looks nearly like lots of little polyps. But I have never seen any thing quite like it..a veterinary
opinion would be good. I think your axolotl is a little on the light side, if you could try earthworms I think you will see some improvement.
 
bellabelloo said:
This is a link to guide you on fridging :-

Axolotl Sanctuary

I am not sure what it is, looks nearly like lots of little polyps. But I have never seen any thing quite like it..a veterinary
opinion would be good. I think your axolotl is a little on the light side, if you could try earthworms I think you will see some improvement.
Click to expand...

We have found a vet that will look at him but when we asked if they looked at axolotls, the response was "what are they?" which doesnt fill me with confidence. Obviously I want the best possible help for him but I feel vets arent necessarily experts on axolotls.

Could the problem be weight related? We never noticed this problem unless we started feeding him less. Would it be worth feeding him every night for a few weeks and see if the problem improves?

With regards to earthworms, do you put them in whole or chop them up?
 
To build him up a bit. I would offer an earthworm once a day. My adults eat them whole the worms are some times nearly 4 inches, if you are a little worried try cutting the worm in half. I am not sure it will necessarily help with his original problem though.

Since you have noticed his interesting bottom, has anything changed with his behaviour?
 
bellabelloo said:
To build him up a bit. I would offer an earthworm once a day. My adults eat them whole the worms are some times nearly 4 inches, if you are a little worried try cutting the worm in half. I am not sure it will necessarily help with his original problem though.

Since you have noticed his interesting bottom, has anything changed with his behaviour?
Click to expand...

Do you catch the worms yourself? Do you wash them before giving them to your axolotls? Sorry for the perhaps silly questions.

His behaviour havent changed at all. He doesnt seem in any discomfort and like I said, he hasnt lost his appetite. Are they good signs? Is there a chance, this could be nothing to worry about?
 
I do at times. I don't tend to use any chemicals etc in my garden. but I do however feed them to a lot of my pets, so I also order them from :-
Worms Direct UK - worms for fishing, fishing bait, worms for bait, Dendrobaena for fishing, fishing bait wholesalers
These I keep in a shaded part of the garden in one of those plastic crates, when it gets too cold they live under the stairs.

To be honest I do not know if you should worry about the problem or not. I would because I worry about just about everything :eek: I hope some one who has seen something like this before will comment.
 
Hi,

Not sure if it's them you've tried, but the university in Edinburgh has a vet exotic animals department which should be able to help.

Can't say I've seen anything like that before personally. In a medical sense the likely first investigation (of the lesion itself - obviously full husbandry etc would normally be assessed by the vet) would be taking samples for microscopy. Whether the potential trauma of such procedures (generally the more invasive the procedure, the more likely to come up with a reliable answer) would actually be in the animal's interest, if the lesion isn't changing much, is perhaps questionable though. That would need to be discussed with a vet actually seeing the animal physically.

Hope you can get him sorted out - would be interested to hear any findings.

Bruce.

rosstxttpo said:
We have found a vet that will look at him but when we asked if they looked at axolotls, the response was "what are they?" which doesnt fill me with confidence. Obviously I want the best possible help for him but I feel vets arent necessarily experts on axolotls.

Could the problem be weight related? We never noticed this problem unless we started feeding him less. Would it be worth feeding him every night for a few weeks and see if the problem improves?

With regards to earthworms, do you put them in whole or chop them up?
Click to expand...
 
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