Illness/Sickness: Pictures inside : Axolotl stop eating / bump under lower jaw, suggestions cause and treatment

Hello everyone,

Some backstory:

Raising this one for past 4 months it was 2cm long when I get it and grew super fast up to 14cm.

Cycled tank, bare bottom , kept at temperature 18C, fed variety of foods like earthworms, two kinds of axolotl pellets, salmon pellets you name it this little thing ate like a piggy, ate everyday

Fast forward to two weeks ago, it lost all appetite. Woudnt eat anything for a week lethargic and lost some of the coloration. No visible signs sickness on its body

Week 2 without food, still not idea what it might be , offered food daily and do a 70% water-change every day dropped temperature to 11C;

3 days ago noticed a bump under its mouth lower jaw





















Started it on a round of erythromycin antibiotic for past 4 days hoping it might help.

Appetite somewhat shows it tries to eat worms/pellets if its offered near its head, then swallow and after like 5 - 10minutes it throws them up. Before it would hunt over the aquarium regardless of where food was dropped.

Does anyone have any insight what this might be or is familiar with the symptoms or how to treat it and with what?

Is it bacterial? Fungal? ( doubt ), something else?

Not one person has idea? Well this is a bummer on forum this big :/

Update: for all the people that might find this helpful in the future.

TL;DR Axolotl is back to normal and healthy after treatment.

After almost 20 days of not eating the following treatment was used as last resort and worked wonderful:

Treatment took 2 weeks:

Tank temp 11C
Meds used: Erythromycin 250mg and Prednisolone 10mg


Week 1
- Antibiotic Erythromycin dose for 35L QT tank daily.
Due to absence of appropriate axolotl kind of meds, human grade was used not ideal for dissolving but it did the trick, one capsule of 250mg was diluted in the tank. Upscale this as required, for 35L tank this is enough to have effect.

After 24 hours with the antibiotic in the water I do 80-90% water change ( keep in mind using antibiotics and/or other meds will nuke your cycled filter media , water changes are a must if you want to keep your water quality specifications acceptable).

- Still no appetite.

Week 2 noticed the bump under the lower jaw and bit of swelling probably the cause of issues with eating. Ok time work on that with something that works fast no time to loose now its been almost a 27 days, since we do not know for sure what it is we are going to use something that will work on inflammations among other things.

- Adding Prednisolone 10mg dissolved into the 35L QT tank with the already ongoing treatment of Erythromycin.

Water changes continued every single day at 80-90%.
Once again 10mg is enough to have effect on 35L tank, upscale this if required based on tank size.

New water always matches temperature and its conditioned with API Prime.

3 Days after Prednisolone appetite started to show more after the 7th day she started eating and hunting for food around the tank!

Treatment concluded after 2 weeks and I still kept the daily water changes for 10 more days. Appetite came back stronger after each day.

After that I introduced a cycled sponge from my other tank to instantly cycle the the QT tank filter and allow me to keep good water parameters without the daily water changes.

Bump under the jaw is still present but smaller and will most likely stay there as it is, but it seems to no longer creates issues with the eating.

She went from thin almost no belly back being fatty and eating every food offered like she did before it got sick.



Thats all folks