haileyvp
New member
I am in need of some advice. I first started with axolotls a year and a half ago with an albino GFP male and a melanoid GFP female. They bred before I could separate them, and I decided to raise a few of their babies. A few weeks ago I noticed one of the young one's gills starting to shrink, and in the last week or so it has started to morph, with the tail fin reducing as well. They are about 6 months old now, and the one that's morphing is around 6" long. This one was housed with one of its siblings that is doing great, so I'm not sure why it's morphing, as the water parameters and temperature were fine, though the nitrates were a bit high at times between water changes.
With the holidays, I haven't been able to keep a close eye on it, and the gills have reduced rather quickly it seems. The pictures are from this past Tuesday (longer gills) and today, unfortunately I wasn't able to find a picture of it from before the morphing started.
I've since separated it into a tote to provide it with a land section (doing water changes daily) and removed those few smaller rocks seen in the first image (they were larger than the axolotl's head), but I'm not sure at what point to remove the water altogether and convert it to terrestrial only, with moist substrate. I've done a lot of research in the last few days about keeping tiger salamanders as I couldn't find much about morpholotls (as I've seen them called on this site). Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
With the holidays, I haven't been able to keep a close eye on it, and the gills have reduced rather quickly it seems. The pictures are from this past Tuesday (longer gills) and today, unfortunately I wasn't able to find a picture of it from before the morphing started.
I've since separated it into a tote to provide it with a land section (doing water changes daily) and removed those few smaller rocks seen in the first image (they were larger than the axolotl's head), but I'm not sure at what point to remove the water altogether and convert it to terrestrial only, with moist substrate. I've done a lot of research in the last few days about keeping tiger salamanders as I couldn't find much about morpholotls (as I've seen them called on this site). Any advice would be greatly appreciated.