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Is my axolotl okay?

Elisa

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Sep 20, 2018
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Firenze
Hi, I have an axolotl and he started floating after being alone while I was away from home, he ate well and never refused food, he was kind of thin and the gills didn't look too good so after a couple days of floating I tubbed him. I'm doing 100% water changes every day and I'm trying to keep the temperature below 20 degrees Celsius. It has been a week more or less and he is still eating really well (I feed him earthworms every other day and some pellets on the days without worms) he looks a little better and not as thin as he was before but the gills don't seem to grow back much and he sometimes stays with the head at the top of the water with the back legs touching the ground (I put the water low enough for him not to float). Also he pooped really weird this morning, I will show you a photo if I can understand how to do it.
I am really concerned. It's my first time owning an axolotl and I really want him to get better.
 

Ekmanor

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Oct 18, 2014
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Hi Elisa, I am not very knowledgeable on axolotls but I have a little bit of experience- hopefully some other users can chime in! I have two axolotls at the moment, one is fairly young (but older/larger than the other,) at about 3.75 inches (around 9 cm I think.) And the other who was VERY badly injured at the local pet store (all four limbs are missing from being chomped by other axolotls and fish at the pet store.) I’ve noticed when I first got the larger/older one he would float a lot almost as if he couldn’t control his depth in the water due to his age/inexperience with swimming! (He was a hatchling when I got him.) I checked water parameters and temp, and everything was perfect in that aspect. I had a air pump in the tank so it most likely wasn’t due to a lack of oxygen in the water and he eats about half an earthworm every other day! He was and still is kept in a bare bottom tank with nothing for him to swallow. He seemed fine physically, so I just closely watched him for the next few months and as he got older he slowly stopped floating. I strongly feel like he just either didn’t know how to stop floating or he just didn’t want to due to his age.

I could very well be wrong, but it is my opinion that my axolotl was fine. How old is your axolotl? What are your water parameters and temps? What is your substrate if you have any? Your axolotl might be impacted. Can you upload some pics for us? The way I upload pics is through a free pic sharing website called imgur, just take some pictures and upload them to imgur, then copy/paste the link to those pics in the reply box. There are other ways of uploading pics but that is the way I do it. Good luck!
 
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