Swollen Cloaca, or just a Male?

I am once again here posting about Cole. Why is it everytime I post in this section, it has to do with him? >_> Haha.

I noticed yesterday that Cole's cloaca was a little swollen. When I checked on him today, it looked a little more prominent, and a little more... "open." I thought it might have been that he is now definitely showing it's a "he". I.E, finally old enough to sex him. However, I'd like to make sure that that IS the case, and that Cole isn't sick or having a prolapse or something. I saw another post by another user, and Melfy stated that it looked like the axie was laying spermatophores. The photo in that post looked similiar to what Cole's going through now. However, I believe that Cole is a bit too young to be laying those around the tank, and I haven't seen any. His toe-tips are lighter, too, signaling possible maturity?

I see no excess swelling anywhere else, though he does have his "belly bump" again, which I believe is due to his eating. He acts happy enough, swimming around the tank, resting in floating plants as normal...

Anyway, here's a couple of pics.
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b17/AuraCantos/P1060341.jpg
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b17/AuraCantos/P1060342.jpg This one is my -possible- female Leucistic, Rai. Normal-looking bits.
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b17/AuraCantos/P1060353.jpg Cole's open cloaca. Open, swollen, but not discolored and seems painless.
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b17/AuraCantos/P1060358.jpg
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b17/AuraCantos/P1060359.jpg

Looks normal to me. Might want to prepare for eggs from the looks of it!

Yeah, looks like he's been dropping spermatophore, or attempting to.

How old is he?

My male was dropping at about 11months.

Mel

Oh, be still my flustering heart. lol.

You know, I'm not entirely sure how old they are... I got them the beginning of December, and they were roughly... 4.5- 5.0 inches, give or take a bit. Now they've gotten alot bigger, say... 6 inches? I'd say Cole is the smallest one, at about 5.75 inches. A while back, I posted about maybe determining their age from the size, and someone told me they could be around 4-6 months. If thats the case, then Cole would only be 5-7 months old. Far too young to be trying to breed, right?

Mine was about 10 inch when he started.

Some axolotls dont grow to the 10-12inch, someone once told me theirs only grew to about 7-8 inches and they bred.

It could be that he's a small but 'fully formed' axolotl or that it was just a practise run for when he's older.

Have you spotted any spermatophores in the tank?

Mel

Nothing yet, but they're all being pretty active, running around the tank exploring. Just tested the water parameters, miniscule amounts of nitrate and nitrite (much less than .25), no ammonia. Tank's at about 61F. Who knows, with my luck I'll wake up tomorrow and the tank will be COVERED in eggs, and I won't have anything ready, haha!

He could just be little, but I'm guessing he's doing practice runs. Sometimes males will drop spermatophores even when there's no female around. My 3 males used to do it all the time, and they'd never even seen a female.