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Stressed axie - please help!

firstaxie

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I've been overseas for just under two weeks and I left my axolotl in the care of my mum. While I was away, she put new sand down in the tank (I recently took out some rocks which you all informed me were small enough for him to swallow) but apart from that, feeding him, and some 20% water changes, she left everything untouched and said that he's been fine.

However, I've been back for two days and I've noticed that the poor little thing is stressing out completely. He's eating normally but he is swimming rapidly backwards and forwards, up and down, in his tank, hitting into the sides of it most of the time. He's leucistic anyway, but his body is notably paler, and his tale is quite red. When he swam up for some food I noticed that his (and actually it could be a "her"... not yet a year old) cloaca was bright red and a bit swollen.

I tried changing out a bit of the water because I thought this might be the problem, but when I did that, my axie started swimming around even more frantically (faster than I've ever seen him!) and all these tiny bubbles started coming out of his mouth. This happened a couple of times and now he's just sitting underneath the chiller pump, not moving at all.

The tank water isn't murky or anything, the temperature is consistently 19 degrees, but the tubes in and out of the chiller are pretty filthy from all the silt that my mum couldn't get off the new sand...

Please help! I don't know what could be the matter or whether any of these symptoms are connected, and I'm not sure what to do :(
 

firstaxie

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Any suggestions? :confused:

It's been a bit over an hour and Apollo has stopped swimming around rapidly/blowing bubbles but I'm still curious to know what might have caused that, as well as the redness :sick:
 

Kaysie

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Do you test your water parameters? I imagine all the silt clogged your filter.

What do you feed? How often?
 

firstaxie

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I haven't tested the water yet, I'll have to take it into a pet store tomorrow, but I'll definitely have a look at the filter.

I feed Apollo daily. Used to feed him beef heart but I made the switch to blood worms a couple of months ago. He's eating normally at the moment - had two cubes of blood worms this morning.
 

Kaysie

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Neither one of those foods are nutritionally complete. You should consider setting up a worm-farm in order to introduce more calcium into Apollo's diet.

If Apollo is an adult, feeding daily isn't necessary. I feed my adults 2-3 times a week.
 

Kaysie

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They're usually considered adults around 6months of age.

How big is your tank?
 
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firstaxie

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Ah well he's probably around 8 months now... The tank is 70L and he lives alone.
 
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