The continuing trials of Huey

Hello, everybody. It's been awhile since I last posted! Like, well, four months. Sorry about that!

Now that my little andersoni has made the questionable decision to live upon the land, he's run into a pretty serious problem. I'm not really sure if this is the right section, since he doesn't live in the water anymore, but since it's divided by species and andersoni's close enough I figure I'll put it here.

Since about early-to-mid December, Huey's had some sort of skin infection on his back. I have some pictures, but they're from this time, and it mostly looks the same now. I'll try to get some newer ones, but till then just bear with me. The infection is on his back and tail, and is raised, blistered, and black, and the skin is constantly peeling. I took him to the vet, and he said it was likely a bacterial infection, but that he couldn't know more without a culture. Unfortunately, he was covered in dirt at the time so any sort of test would be contaminated. Christmas was coming up and I had to go home (and I took him with me) so any tests or anything had to be delayed till January. Still, he gave me some antibiotic to drop onto his infected area - Baytril (Enrofloxacin). It was pretty dilute and I had to put it on twice a day.

After about a week and a half I thought maybe I was finally seeing some progress - all the nasty infected skin peeled off and left him with nice soft skin underneath. But then that ruptured into infection, too. Sigh. So I took him back to the vet, and since I had been keeping him in a moist paper towel-lined container the whole time, he was no longer covered in dirt. Now I hate to keep him in there, but I don't want to aggravate it further, so it seemed the most sanitary place to keep him (inside a box, in perpetual darkness). We got a culture and it turned out to be some form of cyanobacteria (I apologise that I can't be more specific.) It is environmental and rarely pathogenic. Hm.

Turns out this bacteria is resistant to the type of antibiotic we were using, so he switched me to a new one: Bactroban (mupirocin). This one is an ointment and a bit easier to apply. However I took him in again, because between the time when we found out what it was and before I could get the new antibiotic, I had stopped treating him with the ineffective one and left him alone. I checked up on him and holy ****! He looked a lot worse! And it looked like he had some white fuzz on him, too. So fungus, right?

So I take him in again, we got a new sample, and sure enough, it's a fungus. But I don't know who's working at that lab, because they don't seem especially, um, good, so I don't know what kind of fungus it is. Useful, right? Anyways, the vet just called me today (the lab is separate from him) and told me the news. Amazingly, I happened to be at a drug store at the time, and he told me he felt the fungus should take priority, and I should treat that first. The treatment? Undecylenic acid. The same stuff humans use for athlete's foot and ringworm. Okay, sure, fungus is fungus, but it might hurt him too, right?

So I'm taking him in again on Monday and I'm going to treat him with this until then, and we'll see how he's dealing with it. I diluted it down to 4 parts water to 1 part medicine (and it's at 10% Undecylenic acid W/V normally, so reducing that to 1/5th makes it 2%). I just applied it before coming onto here and... he did not seem to enjoy it. Granted, he never enjoys getting poked with a Q-tip (salamanders are not the "petting" kind of pets, who knew?) and maybe it was just me being paranoid, but he seemed to appreciate this one less.

So I guess my question is - as much as I trust my vet (he's the only practicing herpetologist in all of Vancouver, it seems), I am a little worried about using human medicine. Although I guess that baytril is used on mammals too and it was fine... But does anyone here have any opinions on this?

And second, he hasn't eaten in nearly two months (!) He is very skinny now, and starting to lose energy. It's really heart-breaking to see... So I have to force-feed him, a process neither of us will enjoy. I read the post on how to do it with axolotls (which by all rights should be more difficult), but I still can't seem to do it. I'm having trouble opening his mouth, and the picture showing the tool used to do so is broken (of course).

So... yup. Thanks for your help!

Because morphed andersoni are so rare I and anyone else can only make suggestions, not any absolute advice. I have an artificially morphed axolotl and it did not eat for a long time after morphing. It now feeds totally differently from aquatic axolotls, bending its head back and begging for food like a baby bird. It has not had skin problems. I can't help on force feeding I've never done it.

My morphed axolotl still likes to go into the water and has a shallow pond, only slightly deeper than its body. I wonder if letting Huey sit in a shallow tray of medicated water would be better than the scraping of a Q tip.

If the present medication does not work a bath in a weak solution of methylene blue may be worth a try. It is known to be safe for axolotls and has activity against quite a wide range of bacterial and fungus like organisms. You could use it to soak the towels and any other media in the enclosure to try to reduce re-infection. Just expect everything in sight to get stained blue. Treating the whole surface of the animal rather than just the patch may be more effective.

I do not know what the optimum temperature is for andersoni but generally cool is best for sick animals. I think I would be aiming for 7-10 C for now unless someone has an authoritative alternative suggestion.

Andersoni are kept just like axolotls and the general advice for keeping the morphed versions is to keep them just like tiger salamanders.

I am not familiar with keeping the morphed versions at all, but I would have to agree that the medicated bath would probably help him more and probably be less stressful to him than the q-tip. He does look like he's got a healthy weight on him in his pics. Good luck with him!

I really don't think he's going to make it.

He looks really bad, and I've never seen him so weak.

After everything he's gone through...

I tried so hard, too...

He passed away sometime today

i'm so sorry

I too am sorry for your loss, you have been struggling with a difficult to handle terrestrial morph when you expected an easier to care for aquatic animal. I gather others have also struggled with terrestrial andersoni.

Thanks, guys.

I imagine others have had to deal with morphing andersoni, as well. I'm not sure why they seem so prone to it, or why some morph and others don't. I gave him the best care I could, and certainly didn't do anything intentionally to morph him. Alas, he wanted to be on land, I guess.

He was relatively easy to take care of at first - it was his horrible skin infection that became difficult.

I did what I could, but in the end I guess it wasn't enough. I was finally able to bury him today. Maybe one day I'll try again, and this time I'll know what to do.

Thanks everyone for all your help, I really do appreciate it.