Illness/Sickness: Please help! I have a stressed Ambystoma opacum looking very sickly

Hi I'm new to the forum and caring for salamanders. I have a lovely ~2 year old marbled salamander. He is in a 20 gal tall vivarium with a pool, Epipremnum aureum, Alocasia sp., peat moss, sphagnum moss, 5 large rocks to hide under and a plastic cave which he shares with a green tree frog hybrid. I feed him primarily crickets because he doesn't seem to like the red worms and hasn't eaten blood worms for months. I have an aquarium/plant light on the tank for the plants and the temperature is 70 degrees with 50% humidity currently because the heat in the house is on.

Two days ago I came home to find the salamander swimming in the pool which I hadn't seen him do in the past 6 months. He seemed to be agitated and was thrashing in the water. I found a layer of film on the water surface and a couple of his crickets were swimming in the water as well. I moved one of the rocks so he could get out better and he immediately ran out of the pool. It was the first time I've seen a salamander run. He was breathing extremely heavily and his entire body was heaving. I left him alone because I didn't want to stress him but I did a 80% water change on the pool. I skimmed off the film and replaced the water I removed with tap water which I had set out for a couple days in a jug after treating with water conditioner for fish tanks.

Yesterday I noticed that my salamander was wandering around the tank looking for a hiding spot, normal for him. This morning though he was in the open and was very dry. I tried misting him but he started thrashing about then rolled over onto his back and started opening and closing his mouth. I literally felt like the water was hurting him. I don't have a pH testing kit with me because I just moved and it got left behind. I'm in the south so everything is closed today for church so I went to the only open store, Walmart. There was nothing in the pet aisle to help so I grabbed some distilled water thinking that maybe the water here is too soft or acidic for him. I've only been here 2 weeks and he moved with me from Illinois. When I got back he was laying on his side. I wet my hands with the distilled water and started stroking him with damp fingers. He moved his tail a little so I set up a quarantine tank with fresh moss soaked in the distilled water. I gave him his cave to hide under and he was able to lay up right but not looking good.

I warmed up some of the distilled water to room temperature and tested it on my wrist first. I held him cupped in my hand in a bowl of the warm distilled water with his body submerged but his head above the water. He seemed okay but after a couple minutes his rear right foot started trembling and it looked like he was losing moisture. I'm not sure what the ionic levels of distilled water are but my first thought was osmosis and that there might be a salinity difference causing the water to draw water out of his body. I took him out of the water and put him back in the moss. A couple hours later he didn't look any better so I put a plastic lid with a very small amount of the distilled water in it in the cage. I placed him half in the water and half out. That was about 2 hours ago and he hasn't moved since.

Does anyone have any ideas? I feel like a horrible caretaker and this is the first time he has had any issues.

Nevermind, he died.

Sorry to hear of your loss

I'm really sorry he died. Distilled water is very bad for amphibians.

CheeseyDean said:

I'm really sorry he died. Distilled water is very bad for amphibians.

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This is more than a little debatable. The issue with distilled water isn't as big as has been touted everywhere for the last ten plus years. The original data is based on the fact that tiger salamander larva lose ions into the distilled water.. the original study didn't look at whether the salamanders could recover the ions.. which later research confirms.

Something I wrote elsewhere

If we look at the history of the issue, it started with several articles discussing ion loss to severely hypotonic solutions primarily by tiger salamander larvae which were summed up in Amphibian Medicine and Captive Husbandry (2001, Kreiger Press) with the recommendation to not use distilled or RO water with animals as it causes the loss of some ions into the solution (calcium) through the osmoregulation. The more recent data came out in as series of experiments in Ecological and Enviromental Physiology of Amphibians (2009, Oxford Press). In those the studies were run for a longer period and it demonstrated that yes those ions were lost to the solution but the amphibians also were able to actively reabsorb those ions back from solution. The loss is basically energetic unless the amphibian has something compromising the ability to osmoregulate such as septecimias or chytridmycosis. So as long as the amphibian is healthy it is in reality fine to use and you can get away from those calcium stains.

If we step back and look at it clinically, technically tap water or filtered water or even pond or stream water is also significantly hypoosmotic in potential to the amphibians as the osmolarity of amphibian plasma is much higher than that of those water sources. The impact is the same, the amphibian loses ions to the water and reabsorbs them. Somewhere on forum I think have some of the data on amphibian ringers compared to pedialyte and why pedialyte shouldn't be used in cases of suspected hypocalcemia.

In animals with compromised abilities to osmoregulate, amphibian ringers is suggested for a number of reason as it reduces stress on the system of the amphibian and in cases of extreme water retention, under the care of a vet, hyperosmotic amphibians ringers are suggested.

In cases like the above, where the water is coming into contact with a variety of materials the water is als still going to be hypotonic with respect to the amphibian but is going to have picked up stuff from the enclosure which is going to go into solution. Just so people have a better understanding of the whole issue about distilled, RO, tap and so forth..
The way solutions that may be important in osmoregulation are compared is through osmolarity which can be referenced here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmolarity) (to prevent a lengthy tedious explanation).
The different types of water used to care for amphibians (RO, DI, tap and even high content mineral waters) have a osmolarity that typically runs from 0 (for RO, DI) up to 28 mOsm/kg (for high content mineral waters) (see www.osmolality.com/pdf/Rave%20Drugs.doc). This is then compared to amphibian ringers which has a rating of 229 mOsm/kg (Amphibian Medicine and Captive Husbandry, 2001 Krieger’s Press), which is considered to be isotonic for the purposes of osmoregulation with amphibian body chemistries.
As can be seen by the values for water in the paragraph above, regardless of the type of water used, ions will be lost into solution. The degree of loss is going to be of the same scale regardless of the type used as the osmolarity is very similar to one another. The frogs will actively scavenge ions back out of the water (or if the substrate contains mobile calcium and other ions and is moist) from the substrate. This discussion is assuming healthy amphibians and not ill or otherwise compromised ones.

There is a lot of hype about distilled and RO water that has been continually perpetuated on the internet for a number of years, and I’m sure will continue for quite a long time into the future.

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All sources of water cause the loss of ions unless it is the same as the concentration of the tissues in the salamander (such as amphibian ringers..). .

There could've been a variety of factors at play:

-did you supplement the crickets? If not, it could be calcium/phosphorous deficiencies.
-mixing species can be stressful, especially for painfully shy species like A. opacum
-sphagnum moss can be fairly acidic and isn't generally recommended.

Sorry to hear of your loss. It's hard to lose an animal, especially when there is doubt as to how it died. Sometimes things are beyond our control, but sadly it's hard to find anyone willing to do an investigative necropsy on a salamander, unless you're very lucky. I hope the future is better for you and your critters, and perhaps the answer will come some day.

Ed said:

This is more than a little debatable. The issue with distilled water isn't as big as has been touted everywhere for the last ten plus years. The original data is based on the fact that tiger salamander larva lose ions into the distilled water.. the original study didn't look at whether the salamanders could recover the ions.. which later research confirms.

Something I wrote elsewhere

All sources of water cause the loss of ions unless it is the same as the concentration of the tissues in the salamander (such as amphibian ringers..). .

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Hi Ed,

Thanks for the useful info..however, another point. It does seem to be a controversial issue, and I'm aware the textbooks vary with their recommendations.

The ion issue does, as you say, appear to be less important than previously considered although in a very clinical set-up where no substrate etc can enter the water I would still have concerns.

However, distilled water has no natural buffering capacity. It will tend to be very acidic (possibly pH 5.5 or less) due to carbon dioxide absorption from the atmosphere (during standing, or even production) and it will be less able to "cope with" any contaminants (including the animal's own wastes).

Hope this helps,

Bruce.

herpvet said:

Hi Ed,

Thanks for the useful info..however, another point. It does seem to be a controversial issue, and I'm aware the textbooks vary with their recommendations.

The ion issue does, as you say, appear to be less important than previously considered although in a very clinical set-up where no substrate etc can enter the water I would still have concerns.

However, distilled water has no natural buffering capacity. It will tend to be very acidic (possibly pH 5.5 or less) due to carbon dioxide absorption from the atmosphere (during standing, or even production) and it will be less able to "cope with" any contaminants (including the animal's own wastes).

Hope this helps,

Bruce.

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Hi Bruce,

If I remember correctly, the newer studies were discussed in this book http://www.amazon.com/Ecological-Environmental-Physiology-Amphibians-Hillman/dp/0198570325 which covers some of the newer information.

With respect to osmoregulation, even in a clinical set-up there is going to be a loss and reuptake over time.. If I remember the data correctly, it reaches an equilibrium with the amphibian long before it becomes a metabolic concern. Now with that said, I would be concerned with an animal that was compromised with it's ability to osmoregulate..

pH is a different topic, and it is true that distilled has a lesser ability to buffer against issues and often during production results in a reduced pH. However, we have to keep in mind that the impact on the pH is going to depend on the volume of the water, the mass of the animal and which inputs we are considering (for example, ammonia release is going to react with the excess ions resulting in the non-toxic form (ammonium).

I guess my main point to take away from it is that it isn't the animal destroying solvent that is often portrayed in/on many of the forums and articles.

Ed