Illness/Sickness: Convulsions

Okay! it's anough, I just saw him do it again and I really like to know what the hell is going on.

Once or twice every week my white axie behaves very strange.
It runs arround in his tank and every 10 seconds it starts convulsing his body.
It curls up to one side and it's always thesame side.

I'm starting to get worried, it's been a long time now but today I saw him doing it again...

Aspecially because it doesn't look voluntairy, but very much like spasms.

Please advice

Would you know how old your axolotl is? Do you think it is happening more often? If possible could you take a photo of when he is curled up on his side. Could you also tell us a little more about your tank set up too. This may help give a bigger picture of what may be happening.

He/she is approximately 3-4 months old
The water seems to be fine, No3 / No2 = 0 , GH = arround 10 to 15 , KH = 6 to 10 , PH = 7

The tank bottom is covered with sand (a fine sea sand)
It's washed before it went in

There's a big ball of java moss, some plants that we call carbonleaf (in the litteral translation)
And some belgium green
These are both coldwater oxygen plants

And finally a plastic pvc tube thats sanded and washed before it went in

I use a filter with a large sponge and a little bit a charbon in it to dechlorinate and get rid of any ammonia
The filter filters arround 200L/h and my tank has +- 60L of water

It's happening from time to time, I spend hours of watching in the evening and it goes well for most of the time, and then suddenly out of nowhere he has one of those attacks once or twice a week (that I see it)

He/she has no wounds or other enjuries, and is eating well so it's the right body size

Here's a pica of my tank:



I will try to make a picture or a short film next time I see it happening

Still no answer, nobody had a twitchy axolotl before?

u sure you have 0 nitrate? I'd check ammonia if that's the case. You said you use carbon to dechlorinate, do you also use a conditioner to dechlorinate?

This is a bit out of my element, but it sounds like your guy could be having seizures. If this is the case then the question becomes, "what is triggering them." This is a difficult question, because there are many factors that could be the route cause and it could take some trial and error to figure out. The main thing is that he comes out of them and that he doesn't injure himself. Until you identify the route cause of the seizures you may want to take anything out of the tank that he could injure himself on when he has an episode.

As a note: anything with a nervous system can have a seizure.
Things that can cause seizures in aquatic (and any) animals:

Toxins: Is anything leaching into the tank, has it been used by others previously, has there ever been copper in the system, what is the source of food and is it a reputable source. Is there any chance of pesticides leeching into the water?

Disease and Injury: Are there any other symptoms aside from the seizures? Were there any accidents when shipping?

Electric shock: when using anything with electricity in water there is always the chance of a stray current in the water. This can even occur if there are no exposed wires and is a known issue in the fish keeping hobby. You can purchase a grounding rod for the tank to prevent this. The thing to note is that the current doesn't have to be strong enough for us to detect to affect a fish or amphibian.

Systemic: He could just have some messed up wiring in his head. This doesn't mean that he will die from it. Many animals have siezure and live long and happy lives if well cared for. It does mean that you will need to ensure he has a seizure proof home though.

This isn't by far a comprehensive list of causes, but it might give you something to start with and does contain what I have found to be the most common causes of seizures in animals, particularly fish.

*Edit*
I just realised that you said that you use carbon in your tank. There have been a number of recent studies linking the use of carbon to systemic illnesses in fish. Especially sensitive varieties and it has been generally accepted by a number of experts that carbon is really only needed for the removal of medication in the water or odors and is otherwise avoided by many serious fish keepers. It could be something that you might want to concider.

You say you use fine seas sand, did you collect this yourself? This has been niggling me since you posted.

bellabelloo said:

You say you use fine seas sand, did you collect this yourself? This has been niggling me since you posted.

Click to expand...

Nope, it comes in big 8kilo bags at the pet shop

Icarez said:

Nope, it comes in big 8kilo bags at the pet shop

Click to expand...

It wasn't labled live sand was it?

no, just "fine sea sand" It's mostly sold for tropical fish aquariums
It's probably just some other sort of sand, but the color is thesame as sea sand, hence the label

The word "tropical" worries me. Anything labelled specifically like that is for that and that alone, is it possible for you to ask the shop or look up the make of the sand, so that we can find out if contains anything?

I'm going there now so I'll check the label

Well I'm back

the label said the said has been specially treated against fungus, diseases etc.
so I think that should be fine

How was it treated? I'd be worried about chemical contaminants with 'treated' sand.

It didn't say, just that it had a special "treatment" against those things

Icarez said:

It didn't say, just that it had a special "treatment" against those things

Click to expand...

The treatment worries me too. It could have been that the sand was UV sterilized or it could have been chemically treated. UV sterilization makes the most sence, but that doesn't mean anything. I would grab a sample of the water and ask the aquarium store to test it for copper (it could be leaching out if it was copper treated).

The other thing you could do, to guard against chemicals leaching from the treatment is place some carbon in your filter or change the substrate and see if he stops convulsing. Even if most of the chemicals used for treating the sand have degraded/been removed/etc there could still be undetectable traces in your water that are messing with the axolotl. They are much more sensitive than fish to these things and many things that are safe for fish are toxic to amphibians in general.

This could very well be a toxin trigger to the seizures.

Hmmm I sure hop that's not the case, the good thing is since I started this thread he didn't do it anymore.. or not that I have seen
There is already a small amount of charbon in my filter, could it be that it resolved on itself?

Anyways I found a product called Aquasafe, that claims to dechlorinate and get rid of heavy metals
Should I use this just in case? I didn't buy it yet cause I wanted to check first

I used to feed them small fish, and from this day on they only get worms so I hope that helps to

I am glad that he hasn't had an episode since you started the thread

Adding carbon to the filter would only be a bandaid solution. Chemicals can continue to leech from the substrate for quite a while (years even) and the carbon would only remove so much and can quickly exhaust itself. I suggested it mostly to see if filtering for chemical contaminants helped. If you have been running carbon all along that it probably isn't helping. Also keep in mind that carbon has been linked to health problems in aquarium animals. It is a catch 22 and I only use it under very specific circumstances.

Right now what you need to do is be looking at things that could cause seizures and start testing for triggers by eliminating one or two potential triggers at a time. It is the same process you do with dogs or cats that start seizing.

Aquasafe would be on the same level as carbon, a bandaid solution and only effective if there are heavy metals in your tap water (which might be the case).The metal binders should not pose a health problem to the axolotl though and if you want to switch to that water conditioner I see no reason why you shouldn't.

Food and environment are the two easiest to adjust and you are on the right track with limiting his diet. If I were you I'd also switch the substrate as a premptive measure.

Well, I checked with the local water purification compagny (yes this might seem overboard but I really liked to know)
You can ask them what's the water composition of the tap water here.
Fortunatly, we have by far one of the best water in the world excluding natural sources
Our tap water contains 0 chloride, 0 heavy metals, and basically only minerals
In other words or as they like to put it, it's not even much different from a superclear natural watersource
Go Netherlands
It's not like this in the entire country but the south has been blessed with many water springs underground, and on top of that one of the most awesome purification stations ^^

I already tried to eliminate some triggers, first thing I tested was lighting
The main light in my room is very dim, its a color changing RGB led and it's not bright enough to scare it

Yesterday I remembered, it was actually happening many times about an hour after they have been fed
I might have been keeping it on a weird diët, but that was because I haven't been able to find any earthworms.
But now I do Found a store that sells them €1.50 for 20 and they are alive and well kept in the fridge
They also sell very little white mosquito larves alive wich I figured would be perfect to feed little mouths once I have them, I think they might even be smaller then daphnia
They sell them for €0.50 and you get quite a nice pouch full of them

I'm going to wait with changing the substrate, since it is just new I just took them off big stones (don't worry it wasn't gravel, just 2 - 2,5cm to keep them on when they were little)

I'm hoping this new food source will be the answer, I'm a bit sad I haven't found the worms earliër