Petersgirl
New member
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2013
- Messages
- 965
- Reaction score
- 20
- Points
- 0
- Country
- United Kingdom
A warning - this is an extremely long post and contains material some people may find upsetting, but I feel it's important.
I have been a member on here for quite some time and have kept a number of axolotls. I wanted to share my story of the single worst thing ever to happen to my babies, so that it might help someone else.
I had seven permanent axolotls about three weeks ago.
Four were long time adults - Toothless, Gally, Jack and Embry - and the other three were adult babies of Jack and Embry - Pig, Sans and Papyrus.
I had the boys (Toothless, Jack, Pig and Sans) in a four footer complete with external filter and chiller, and the girls (Gally, Embry and Papyrus) were in a three footer with an internal filter. It had been hot so I had been taking water out of the girls' tank and replacing it with fresh, and adding ice cubes.
I went out for the day with my friends. Later that afternoon, I got a phone call from my husband saying that Jack, my male adult leucy, was floating. I wasn't too worried - axxies float - but when I got home I realised something was terribly wrong.
Jack wasn't just floating. He was on his side and couldn't stay on that one side. He was bloated to the point where it looked like he was wearing an Edwardian ruff. His tail was purple and his stomach had a red mark on the side, as if someone had pushed their thumb on him too hard and left a mark. Something wasn't right. I took him downstairs and fridged him, believing that he might somehow have swallowed a small rock that was siliconed into my caves and was constipated. He seemed to perk up after an hour and looked calmer, but was still floating.
I came down three hours later and Jack had gone.
I was devastated. My poor baby boy. My favourite. The father to all of my other babies. What did I do wrong?
I thought about it and realised it might be old age - I have had Jack for five years and he was likely two when I got him - but it seemed odd, because seven is not that old for an axxie. They can live up to 15 years with good care.
I tried to carry on and look after my babies. I didn't think anything else would go wrong.
Then my husband called me four days later when I was at work.
Pig had died.
Pig was Jack's son and was only four years old. It didn't make sense now - this wasn't old for an axxie and Pig had been hardy. Something else was wrong.
When I saw Pig, I saw the same symptoms I saw in Jack - bloating around the belly and neck, floating sideways and upside-down. He had gone so pale he looked like a greyish leucistic. He was also bleeding from his cloaca.
I checked the chiller and realised it was reading 24 degrees Celsius, so my chiller hadn't been working efficiently - it had been set at 18 degrees and hadn't even managed to get close. I had checked it with a fridge technician a while before and he had suggested re-gassing it, but that would cost £200 while a new chiller would only be £40-£60 more. I hadn't had the money to replace it right away but I was going to soon, before I realised it had really stopped working. I had put too much confidence in the chiller and hadn't realised it was truly broken as opposed to inefficient.
I found a local exotics vet and immediately got her on the case. She took the bodies of my two deceased babies for autopsy and checked my two remaining boys, weighing them. From this, I learned a few things...
1) You can weigh an axolotl by taking it out of the water and putting it, for as brief a time as possible, on a towel (obviously weigh the towel first).
2) Axolotls who pass away should be passed onto a vet for cremation because they fall under CITES (I'd never had an axxie pass away before and didn't realise). This is what happened to both Pig and Jack.
After spending £250 on this, I dropped the axxies home and went to work. While there, I was told I would need to drive to another surgery an hour away to have the remaining axolotls injected with Baytril. I managed to get off work early and had it done. They also had to be injected a second time a day after.
After all this, the results came through - Red Leg caused by E Coli and A. Hydrophila. My precious babies had contracted scepticaemia. How?
I realised quickly it had been a perfect storm of issues. The chiller had stopped working, making my boys prone to infection. The bacteria could have been in the axxies' faeces, since both of these bacteria live naturally in aquatic poop but, like MRSA, rarely affect healthy individuals living in clean water at a low temperature. In addition, my parents had made me move the big water containers used for dechlorinating water outside, where they'd been in the sun, because we didn't have room for them in the house. I'd seen a little algae growing in them but hadn't really worried - until now.
The boys lived in plastic tubs for about two weeks. I fed them with separate marked turkey basters and marked their tubs so we knew whose was whose. I wore gloves to handle them and their food, too.
I've since corrected the issue with the old tank by cleaning the tank with a few drops of Hibiscrub and boiling hot water and rinsing it out several times. Every bucket and hose that has been in contact with the boys' water has been boiled. The external filter and chiller have been removed and I have since got a new external and am waiting to buy a chiller to hook up to it (I tried buying one a few days ago but the seller had made a mistake and had to refund me, which is taking a while). In the meantime, I have moved the three girls into the four footer and they have a large internal filter for the moment, plus I'm doing water changes every day to cycle it. The boys, I'm glad to say, are in the three footer and are happy and healthy. They got through because of the vet's timely intervention - the Baytril prevented them from getting sick despite the fact that Red Leg is exteremely contagious.
The water bottles have also been replaced.
A few things I would say to my fellow owners...
A) Check your chiller every now and again. It's easy to think it's handling everything but it could be running out of gas and becoming less efficient.
B) Don't keep your water bottles outside in the sun. Since they're dechlorinated they don't have the chlorine to keep out the bad bacteria and algae.
C) Keep an eye on your axxies' temp - have a thermometer stuck to the outside of the tank even if you have a chiller that tells you the temp. It's always handy to have a double-check system. If it's getting hotter and your chiller can't cope, have it looked at by a fridge technician. It may be that you have to replace the chiller because it's cheaper, so be prepared for that.
D) If you struggle to keep your axxies' temp down, use ice cubes to lower the temp or take water out and replace it with cold dechlorinated water. I've also since put an AC unit in front of their tanks and it seems to help.
E) Make sure you know where you can find a local exotic vet. Get on good terms with them so that you know your pets are in good hands. Exotic vets can sometimes charge a little more because of their expertise, but in my case, I don't think my boys would have survived without my vet.
F) Ask your vet's advice if you're not sure. It was my vet who advised me to use hibiscrub to clean my tank, which I would never have thought of.
G) Red Leg is serious and a horrible disease to have to live through. You will know something is horribly wrong when you see it - for me the distinguishing features were the floating on the side and flipping over in the water, the colour changes, the red marks on the stomachs of the ligher axxies and the bloating around the neck and abdomen. If you see this, your axxie will likely die within hours. If you can get to a vet, it may be worth a try, but you will likely lose your poor baby.
If this does happen to you, see a vet as soon as you can, and if you have other axxies in the same tank, remove all of them immediately to separate tubs and get them to a vet ASAP. The heartbreak of losing one pet to this disease is awful, but losing more than one is unbearable.
What this taught me more than anything is not to be complacent with your setup. Check your chiller regularly. Keep an eye on the dechlorinated water you store. Be sure to check your water chemistry (even though your tank's been cycled for years). Don't do what I did and just assume everything will always be okay because it has been okay up until now, because that was what I did and my poor babies suffered for it.
This post isn't to scare anyone, just to remind you all that these things can and do happen and that there are ways to prevent the worst from happening.
In short, I'm hoping my loss can be your gain.
Good health to all your babies.
I have been a member on here for quite some time and have kept a number of axolotls. I wanted to share my story of the single worst thing ever to happen to my babies, so that it might help someone else.
I had seven permanent axolotls about three weeks ago.
Four were long time adults - Toothless, Gally, Jack and Embry - and the other three were adult babies of Jack and Embry - Pig, Sans and Papyrus.
I had the boys (Toothless, Jack, Pig and Sans) in a four footer complete with external filter and chiller, and the girls (Gally, Embry and Papyrus) were in a three footer with an internal filter. It had been hot so I had been taking water out of the girls' tank and replacing it with fresh, and adding ice cubes.
I went out for the day with my friends. Later that afternoon, I got a phone call from my husband saying that Jack, my male adult leucy, was floating. I wasn't too worried - axxies float - but when I got home I realised something was terribly wrong.
Jack wasn't just floating. He was on his side and couldn't stay on that one side. He was bloated to the point where it looked like he was wearing an Edwardian ruff. His tail was purple and his stomach had a red mark on the side, as if someone had pushed their thumb on him too hard and left a mark. Something wasn't right. I took him downstairs and fridged him, believing that he might somehow have swallowed a small rock that was siliconed into my caves and was constipated. He seemed to perk up after an hour and looked calmer, but was still floating.
I came down three hours later and Jack had gone.
I was devastated. My poor baby boy. My favourite. The father to all of my other babies. What did I do wrong?
I thought about it and realised it might be old age - I have had Jack for five years and he was likely two when I got him - but it seemed odd, because seven is not that old for an axxie. They can live up to 15 years with good care.
I tried to carry on and look after my babies. I didn't think anything else would go wrong.
Then my husband called me four days later when I was at work.
Pig had died.
Pig was Jack's son and was only four years old. It didn't make sense now - this wasn't old for an axxie and Pig had been hardy. Something else was wrong.
When I saw Pig, I saw the same symptoms I saw in Jack - bloating around the belly and neck, floating sideways and upside-down. He had gone so pale he looked like a greyish leucistic. He was also bleeding from his cloaca.
I checked the chiller and realised it was reading 24 degrees Celsius, so my chiller hadn't been working efficiently - it had been set at 18 degrees and hadn't even managed to get close. I had checked it with a fridge technician a while before and he had suggested re-gassing it, but that would cost £200 while a new chiller would only be £40-£60 more. I hadn't had the money to replace it right away but I was going to soon, before I realised it had really stopped working. I had put too much confidence in the chiller and hadn't realised it was truly broken as opposed to inefficient.
I found a local exotics vet and immediately got her on the case. She took the bodies of my two deceased babies for autopsy and checked my two remaining boys, weighing them. From this, I learned a few things...
1) You can weigh an axolotl by taking it out of the water and putting it, for as brief a time as possible, on a towel (obviously weigh the towel first).
2) Axolotls who pass away should be passed onto a vet for cremation because they fall under CITES (I'd never had an axxie pass away before and didn't realise). This is what happened to both Pig and Jack.
After spending £250 on this, I dropped the axxies home and went to work. While there, I was told I would need to drive to another surgery an hour away to have the remaining axolotls injected with Baytril. I managed to get off work early and had it done. They also had to be injected a second time a day after.
After all this, the results came through - Red Leg caused by E Coli and A. Hydrophila. My precious babies had contracted scepticaemia. How?
I realised quickly it had been a perfect storm of issues. The chiller had stopped working, making my boys prone to infection. The bacteria could have been in the axxies' faeces, since both of these bacteria live naturally in aquatic poop but, like MRSA, rarely affect healthy individuals living in clean water at a low temperature. In addition, my parents had made me move the big water containers used for dechlorinating water outside, where they'd been in the sun, because we didn't have room for them in the house. I'd seen a little algae growing in them but hadn't really worried - until now.
The boys lived in plastic tubs for about two weeks. I fed them with separate marked turkey basters and marked their tubs so we knew whose was whose. I wore gloves to handle them and their food, too.
I've since corrected the issue with the old tank by cleaning the tank with a few drops of Hibiscrub and boiling hot water and rinsing it out several times. Every bucket and hose that has been in contact with the boys' water has been boiled. The external filter and chiller have been removed and I have since got a new external and am waiting to buy a chiller to hook up to it (I tried buying one a few days ago but the seller had made a mistake and had to refund me, which is taking a while). In the meantime, I have moved the three girls into the four footer and they have a large internal filter for the moment, plus I'm doing water changes every day to cycle it. The boys, I'm glad to say, are in the three footer and are happy and healthy. They got through because of the vet's timely intervention - the Baytril prevented them from getting sick despite the fact that Red Leg is exteremely contagious.
The water bottles have also been replaced.
A few things I would say to my fellow owners...
A) Check your chiller every now and again. It's easy to think it's handling everything but it could be running out of gas and becoming less efficient.
B) Don't keep your water bottles outside in the sun. Since they're dechlorinated they don't have the chlorine to keep out the bad bacteria and algae.
C) Keep an eye on your axxies' temp - have a thermometer stuck to the outside of the tank even if you have a chiller that tells you the temp. It's always handy to have a double-check system. If it's getting hotter and your chiller can't cope, have it looked at by a fridge technician. It may be that you have to replace the chiller because it's cheaper, so be prepared for that.
D) If you struggle to keep your axxies' temp down, use ice cubes to lower the temp or take water out and replace it with cold dechlorinated water. I've also since put an AC unit in front of their tanks and it seems to help.
E) Make sure you know where you can find a local exotic vet. Get on good terms with them so that you know your pets are in good hands. Exotic vets can sometimes charge a little more because of their expertise, but in my case, I don't think my boys would have survived without my vet.
F) Ask your vet's advice if you're not sure. It was my vet who advised me to use hibiscrub to clean my tank, which I would never have thought of.
G) Red Leg is serious and a horrible disease to have to live through. You will know something is horribly wrong when you see it - for me the distinguishing features were the floating on the side and flipping over in the water, the colour changes, the red marks on the stomachs of the ligher axxies and the bloating around the neck and abdomen. If you see this, your axxie will likely die within hours. If you can get to a vet, it may be worth a try, but you will likely lose your poor baby.
If this does happen to you, see a vet as soon as you can, and if you have other axxies in the same tank, remove all of them immediately to separate tubs and get them to a vet ASAP. The heartbreak of losing one pet to this disease is awful, but losing more than one is unbearable.
What this taught me more than anything is not to be complacent with your setup. Check your chiller regularly. Keep an eye on the dechlorinated water you store. Be sure to check your water chemistry (even though your tank's been cycled for years). Don't do what I did and just assume everything will always be okay because it has been okay up until now, because that was what I did and my poor babies suffered for it.
This post isn't to scare anyone, just to remind you all that these things can and do happen and that there are ways to prevent the worst from happening.
In short, I'm hoping my loss can be your gain.
Good health to all your babies.
