Illness/Sickness: baby axolotl dying...please help!!! urgent!

My axolotl babies/larvae have started to die. They are nearly 2 weeks old. Four died in the first week, I think they were the weaker ones that probably wouldn't have survived anyway. Yesterday 3 died and a further 4 today, these ones were different to the ones that died in the first week; they're tails were bent in the middle. I have one ill one at the moment with a bent tail, who doesn't swim around much. I'm only left with five strong looking axies. I don't want them to die as well! I've done the water checks and everything seems ok. Does anyone know what the problem could be?
Thanks

What size container are they in and how often are you doing water changes? From what I read about axoltl diseases it sounds like you may have to treat these with antibiotics. I'm trying to search for the source where I pulled the information from.

Aha! Here is the site about why the babies die:

http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/why_larvae_die.shtml

When you say that their tails are bent, do you mean curled at the end? or bent, say in the middle or something?

What size tank are they in?

Is there any water current?

What are you feeding them and how often?

How old are they/how many are there?

What's the water temp?

What's the water parameters?

crazyfishlady said:

From what I read about axoltl diseases it sounds like you may have to treat these with antibiotics. I'm trying to search for the source where I pulled the information from.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't recommend using antibiotics as they are so young and you still don't know what's wrong.

Alice, read the link posted by crazyfishlady. Then, if you can give us more details about how you keep them (container, water routine, what kind of food, etc) we may be able to help narrow down the possible causes. I wouldn't jump into using antibiotics until you rule out all other possible causes. All antibiotics have side-effects, could reduce the animals' longevity, and could contribute to the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

It is not uncommon to get mass deaths between 2-4 weeks in axolotl larva, it is normally due to a genetic problem.
I myself lost every larvae from my adult axolotls at between 15-23 days, this was not just 1 batch but several, there is a tendancy for them to suffer from malnutrition, i dont know why but mine just stopped eating..
I remember reading a genetics page but cannot remember if it was on this site, although the reference to that page came from here.
This year i have successfully reared from my adults for the first time.
I know it wasnt anything i was actually doing as i was raising other larva from other peoples eggs at the same time and had no problems.
Maybe someone can point you to the page i refer to, this might give you some insight.
Hopefully your remaining ones will be fine.
I will keep my fingers crossed for you.

Hi,
how are your babies doing now?

I don't know much about Axies but I hope they are OK:ufo: