LunaandArte
New member
Hello everyone! Apologies in advance for a long post, this is a rather weird situation which I’m not entirely sure of the cause of.
I’m getting quite worried about my axolotl Artemis who seems to keep getting rather strange injuries to his tail and legs. This all started a number of months ago when I noticed two fingers missing on one of his hands. Rather than the fingers being cleanly chomped off, it almost looked as if they’d be mangled, bone broken and sticking out. While a little weird we thought it was likely the work of our other axolotl who has in the past been nippy. These fingers have since somewhat healed, the two fingers missing being now clean stumps of skin which i assume are healing slowly.
Today I came in to find another two missing on the other hand which look almost exactly the same as the other two did when I first noticed them being injured and his two back legs are intact but look as if the top layer of skin has been scraped off. Both axolotls also have rather weird tail injuries, luna having a cut which literally looks like someone cut a precise line into her lower tail and arte having a tiny little scissor cut slightly higher.
While this may be them biting each other the injuries seem quite weird and precise for an axolotl to do, do these look like bite/fight injuries? If they are, im not quite sure why they’re fighting, they have enough space to not be territorial and they do eat well. Before this, all that ever happened bite wise was tail bites from time to time so this seems like quite a step up considering nothing has changed in their tank.
They do have decor in their tank so maybe that could be the problem? I have today removed a few things I think could be particularly damaging to see if theres any change but again that doesn’t look as if its the answer either.
I do wonder if the filter has done this, Arte particularly liking sitting on the side of the filter which has holes on to take in gunk. While small, I do recon they could perhaps get their fingers in them but then how have they been cut doing that? Its not like theres blades behind the filter holes but maybe it could have enough power to do something?
Maybe it could be a skin condition? Which is the most worrying but I’m unsure as I really don’t know much about conditions axies can get.
Added are some photos of the current injuries and the hand i hope is healing. Would love to hear you’re opinions, ideas and experiences with this kind of stuff. Thanks for reading!
I’m getting quite worried about my axolotl Artemis who seems to keep getting rather strange injuries to his tail and legs. This all started a number of months ago when I noticed two fingers missing on one of his hands. Rather than the fingers being cleanly chomped off, it almost looked as if they’d be mangled, bone broken and sticking out. While a little weird we thought it was likely the work of our other axolotl who has in the past been nippy. These fingers have since somewhat healed, the two fingers missing being now clean stumps of skin which i assume are healing slowly.
Today I came in to find another two missing on the other hand which look almost exactly the same as the other two did when I first noticed them being injured and his two back legs are intact but look as if the top layer of skin has been scraped off. Both axolotls also have rather weird tail injuries, luna having a cut which literally looks like someone cut a precise line into her lower tail and arte having a tiny little scissor cut slightly higher.
While this may be them biting each other the injuries seem quite weird and precise for an axolotl to do, do these look like bite/fight injuries? If they are, im not quite sure why they’re fighting, they have enough space to not be territorial and they do eat well. Before this, all that ever happened bite wise was tail bites from time to time so this seems like quite a step up considering nothing has changed in their tank.
They do have decor in their tank so maybe that could be the problem? I have today removed a few things I think could be particularly damaging to see if theres any change but again that doesn’t look as if its the answer either.
I do wonder if the filter has done this, Arte particularly liking sitting on the side of the filter which has holes on to take in gunk. While small, I do recon they could perhaps get their fingers in them but then how have they been cut doing that? Its not like theres blades behind the filter holes but maybe it could have enough power to do something?
Maybe it could be a skin condition? Which is the most worrying but I’m unsure as I really don’t know much about conditions axies can get.
Added are some photos of the current injuries and the hand i hope is healing. Would love to hear you’re opinions, ideas and experiences with this kind of stuff. Thanks for reading!
