Illness/Sickness: Ongoing fungus issue

Hello!

I've done all the research I can looking thru old posts, but haven't found an answer to this.
I got my axolotls in November, and ever since then, we haven't made it more than a week in their tank without them getting fungus on their gills. I then have to take them out, and put them in the little tubs with daily water changes for 2 weeks (this gets rid of the fungus within a couple days). Before I've put them back in their aquarium, I've cleaned it well, I've tried cycling it, letting it dry out, even gone as far as baking all of the sand out of it to kill anything that might be in the sand.

For treating the fungus - I've tried Pimafix, Furan 2, Fungus Guard. Can't tell that any of those have done much; isolating the axies and doing daily water changes seems to be all that works

I keep the water clean, temperature is good, there are no other fish or anything in the tank with them and I feed them pellets so no live food to bring in disease.

I just CAN'T figure out why the fungus comes right back every time and my poor axies would love to not have it I'm sure. I don't want to give up on keeping them as I really love them, but I can't seem to beat this fungus issue!!

Hopefully someone else has been thru this that has advice or an idea of what I'm missing to get rid of it long term.

Thanks!
Rebecca

I think you’ve answered your own question

Your tank sounds like it isn’t cycled, so here’s what you do.
* Keep your lotls tubbed
* Do a 100% water change (including filter), rinse it out to get rid of all those treatments, and start from scratch
* Fill tank and use a dechlorinator such as prime - if you fill using buckets, treat the bucket before adding.
* Add the water from your lotl tubs at each tub chsnge daily for ammonia source (especially their turds)
* Leave the tank alone, just monitor the parameters weekly to see how the cycling is going.

It will take anywhere up to 6 or 8 weeks, you cannot rush this.
Never do a 100% water change apart from what I said above, this will crash your cycle.
You will need the API master fresh water test kit, not strips, to monitor these parameters.

Also, what is the temp of the water? Anything over 22c triggers fungus for mine, 24c and up is a problem waiting to happen.
Have a look on here for cycling tips, there are some good posts to refer to.
You can do ‘fish in’ cycling, but this can hurt or kill your lotls if something goes wrong. You can also seed your filter with media from an already cycled filter, which will speed up the process.

But for now, please tell me the temp and we can go from there

The tank is 66 F so 18.9 C. It stays right at that temperature.

If I take them out longer term to cycle the tank, how do I know when it has been long enough? I've always seen recommendations to do it for 2 weeks, but you mentioned 6-8 weeks. I guesss I"m looking for a source for the right water parameters I should be testing for.

If you have a master test kit, you need 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite and up to about 40ppm of nitrate. The nitrate is removed with your weekly water changes.
Your temp is ok.