Axie yawning and biting

Hello all,

I was a bit concerned and hope some more experience Axie owners might shed some light on my wild-types weird behavior.

My little one is about 5 months old and started acting strangely today. I noticed him slowly opening his mouth like a yawn, which he repeated to do every few minutes for about half an hour. Also, After watching him for a bit I noticed him continually swinging his head back toward one back leg and biting at it. He was also dragging it against the plants as if trying to scratch. He is normally an active little dude, who tends to chomp on plants, on fingers, etc, but I have never seen him flipping around like that and biting at himself like that before. I have another 5 month old axie with him as well who is acting normally.

It was a hot day today, and I noticed the water was a little warmer than normal (at about 68F when I normally keep it at about 62F) so I replaced about 1/3rd of the water and brought the temp back down which seemed to each his craziness a bit.

I had also removed about half of the normal plants in his 20g tank the day before, to add some weight to their bases and he had much less cover the he normally does. I added a few other plants in to give him his normal hiding spots back, this also seemed to help his weird behavior too.

Could all this simply be because he was stressed from lack of plants and warmer water? or do you think there is a bigger problem I should be taking care of? I don't want to ignore something that could potentially harm him if left unchanged.

Any help would be awesome, I have only had my little dudes for 2 months, so learning is still a big factor. Thanks so much!

~Katie

Do you have something to test the water parameters? Nitrites, nitrates and ammonia should be 0.

Also do you have gravel in the tank? Pebbles? Anything that can be 'eaten' accidentally? Maybe there's something stuck in his mouth/throat that he's trying to get rid off?

I sometimes saw my axies scratching their gills with their hind legs but not biting their legs.

And when the temp. is too high axies could get stressed. What is the temperature of the water right now?

I don't have a water tester, but I am going to go get one today.

I have sand on the bottom of the tank, and large rocks. Nothing that could be eaten unless he managed to pull a whole leaf off a plant or something.

The water temp right now is at 62. I noticed it rise again today to 68f, so again I did a 1/3 water change to see that it lowered. It was been really hot here, and with no air conditioning in my house I am off to price chillers today. I am checking it every hour and will make sure it stays below below 68-69F. Do you have any thoughts on dropping a few ice cubes in every hour or so?

thanks :happy:

~Katie

Hmm, ice cubes never really worked for me. They melt too fast and the temp stays pretty much the same. About a week ago it was extremely hot here too (and about 20 of my baby axolotls died). Now I have a little plan: when it gets that hot again I place them (with their tubs) in a cool box. So maybe a suggestion? Or another cool place in the house? Or maybe fridging (however... I don't know if people also do that to protect their axies from the heat, but it looks like a good solution to me)

Hmm, did you also feed him something like bloodworm or other small food? Maybe there's something sticking out on the back of the gills? My axie has it pretty often when eating bloodworm and she tries to get rid of it by kicking etc.