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GRAVEL! Pet Shop should be ashamed!!!!!!!

HelloKitty

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Hello all, well I am not a happy Axolotl owner today. I have had my beautiful pair for nearly 6 months and all has been going well until earlier this week when Athena's cloaca started to look a bit bigger and slightly red. I know he is a boy now as its obvious but it was looking a bit too obvious. I figured he must be a bit constipated because I gave them glass worm the other day and they have never had it before. I decided to keep an eye on him and see how it goes before I do any fridging as I didn't want to have to remove him from his home un nesarcerily. But he started floating yesterday afternoon and he has never floated before so I thought I probably should do the fridging now. But while I was watching him he burped a huge amount of air and slowly sank down to the bottom again. At dinner time he was having trouble trying to keep his bum down so I decided to try and give him a little massage in the hope that it would help and by the evening he was staying down again. I didn't fridge him because he did 2 big poops in the evening and I hoped that was the end of his problem. But today I went down to discover that he had pooped a piece of gravel. Now i have never had them on gravel but they were on gravel in the pet shop before I got them. So my poor boy has had that piece of gravel in his tummy for SIX MONTHS!!!!!! Now it must have scratched his bottom because it looked like it had some pinky blood on it and when he swims up you can see that his bum is red underneath :( My poor Athena (who needs a new name!) Looking back it seems obvious because his behaviour had changed lately. He started nipping at Aristotle and her foot came off so I seperated them. And he was nipping at me a bit grumpily instead of sucking my finger playfully and then swimming onto my hand and sitting there. He must have been uncomfortable. But I just thought he was going through some sort of Axie puberty.

Its probably my imagination but he looks relieved today. I have been letting them have time together in the day time for the past few days and today he has been sitting with Aristotle like he really missed her and he sat in my hand again. He took his dinner from me and his cloaca looks like its gone down and is no longer pink except for underneath.

I called the pet shop to complain and they said that they get the axolotls from checazlovakia and they are kept on gravel there. So my guys have come a loooooonnnng way to be with me!!!! But what made me angry is that they said there is nothing they can do about the gravel because they don't have any tanks with sand in. Why they cant change to sand I don't know but I think they should stop selling them if they aren't prepared to stop putting them on gravel.

I really hope that there isn't any more gravel inside my poor boys tum. For all I know Aristotle could have some too. They were both so tiny when I got them that its hard to believe they could have swallowed it but Athena has always been a greedy axie and does have quite a wide mouth compared to Aristotle lol! He even tried to eat his own reflection once.

Am I allowed to name and shame this pet shop on here. They are very helpful and knowledgeable about fish, and pricewise they are good but they are naive when it comes to Axolotls and gravel.

Also, last time we went in there they ha tiny Axolotls in an open tank with water quite close to the top and one must have managed to get out because my husband found a dead axie baby on the floor. It ha obviously been there a while too. It was only about 2 inches long. I decided that I am not going back there and will get my supplies from the aquarium store in epping instead from now on.
 

xxianxx

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I wouldnt bother naming the pet shop, if they kept the axolotls in a decent condition(other than allowing to let them jump outof their tank) they can hardly be blamed for their suppliers poor husbandry, you could argue that they could change supplier but there is no guarantee that the new one would be any better. A pet shop exists to make money and whilst they have a duty of care for their stock, economics will win out. My friend Brian owns a pet shop, i supply him with axys, 4inch at £5 each, excellent condition off non related parents all their limbs, feeding on frozen foods blah blah blah (free advertising for me lol), he can pick them up from eastern europe bigger and cheaper, he tends to rely on me for morphs he cant source. If you think axys are treated bad, check out a delivery of tropical fish from Singapore, one bag live , one bag dead etc
 

HelloKitty

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sorry, should have added that the pet shop themselves also keep the Axies on gravel. But wont change over to sand.
 

xxianxx

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sorry, should have added that the pet shop themselves also keep the Axies on gravel. But wont change over to sand.

Lol, name and shame.
 

Kenneth

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I hate places like this. It's not like the instructions "NO GRAVEL" are hard to abide by, and the fact that they declined to switch just gives further indication to their stupidity and their level of hard-headedness
 

Bellabelloo

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I am pretty sure this is a universal problem. Nearly all aquatic tanks in shops are displayed with gravel. When they get a new supply of axolotls they just plonk them in and hope they sell quickly. Removing the gravel is just too time consuming for them. Also they are rarely placed in water that has not been used to house fish, the risk of them potentially picking up something must be huge.
I recently returned to a place that has done this. I spoke to a harassed young lady who said she would pursue this for me. I wrote an email and advised them this was a problem. They invited me to come in and speak to the staff on axolotl. Unfortunately they had a change of management and this did not happen. I returned two weeks ago and was appalled to see that it was still there, and some of the axolotl had distinctly lumpy tummies. I approached another member of staff and he had heard about my advice and had spoken to the manager...who apparently said it wasn't worth the time it takes to remove gravel from 8 tanks. My advice was again to remove it, explained why and said my concerns where that future owners would recreate the set ups when they purchased their axolotl. His colleague then joined us and listened to my advice, both fully understood what I was saying and agreed that the gravel set ups are a problem, I am very much hoping to find the axolotls are off the gravel substrate when I go back this week.
 
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