danchristopher
New member
My newest addition, Elizabeth, was in extremely poor shape when we brought her home, as I've previously mentioned in other threads. She had really chewed up, sad looking gills and I could feel a few stones very obviously stuck inside her. While in the fridge she pooped out a couple of the stones after a week and I thought her gills looked minimally better.
I gave her salt bathes for a small amount of fungus I discovered and then gave her tea bathes to try and remove the 'white sheen' she had covering her gills, I'm assuming from heat stress (though I'm still waiting for my damned indian almond leaves!!)
Last night I introduced her to her tank because she was looking awfully skinny and was refusing food in the fridge so I thought it might be good and healthy for her to eat. When her container was room temperature and I was slowly adjusting her to the tank water I dropped in a few blackworms, she ate a couple and refused to eat anymore.
Since putting her in her tank she has been acting very strangely. For one thing she moves around very slowly and sluggishly like she is struggling and doesn't have the energy to do much of anything. What really worries me though is that sometimes she swims up to the top of the water and flips out like she's trying to throw herself out of the tank. Right now she is sitting on a plant at the very surface with a little bit of her head out of the water and flicking her gills once every 5-10 seconds or so.
The tank parameters are completely fine. It is filtered with a hang-on filter and there is a sponge filter also cycling in the tank pumping in lots of air bubbles (she is sitting right near it). Is she just struggling to get oxygen because of her tiny gills? Or could it be something more?
There is a photo of her here, her gills look much the same, perhaps a tiny bit longer:
http://www.caudata.org/forum/f46-be...m/f58-sick-axolotl/80352-chewed-up-gills.html
I gave her salt bathes for a small amount of fungus I discovered and then gave her tea bathes to try and remove the 'white sheen' she had covering her gills, I'm assuming from heat stress (though I'm still waiting for my damned indian almond leaves!!)
Last night I introduced her to her tank because she was looking awfully skinny and was refusing food in the fridge so I thought it might be good and healthy for her to eat. When her container was room temperature and I was slowly adjusting her to the tank water I dropped in a few blackworms, she ate a couple and refused to eat anymore.
Since putting her in her tank she has been acting very strangely. For one thing she moves around very slowly and sluggishly like she is struggling and doesn't have the energy to do much of anything. What really worries me though is that sometimes she swims up to the top of the water and flips out like she's trying to throw herself out of the tank. Right now she is sitting on a plant at the very surface with a little bit of her head out of the water and flicking her gills once every 5-10 seconds or so.
The tank parameters are completely fine. It is filtered with a hang-on filter and there is a sponge filter also cycling in the tank pumping in lots of air bubbles (she is sitting right near it). Is she just struggling to get oxygen because of her tiny gills? Or could it be something more?
There is a photo of her here, her gills look much the same, perhaps a tiny bit longer:
http://www.caudata.org/forum/f46-be...m/f58-sick-axolotl/80352-chewed-up-gills.html