Golden Axolotl turning white and losing Gills

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alamao

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Hello,
I bought a golden axolotl a few days ago and he seems to be losing his golden/yellow colour and is turning white, also his gills have swiveled up and the frills on his gills are kind of disappearing and yet the stalks seem fine. He was like this when I got him but I have been reading and it seems that this is not normal. However he is eating great, really good appetite rips the worms straight out of my hand. I was recommended by the pet shop to use earthworms. This is my first axolotl and i'm quite inexperienced with them if anyone can help me i'd feel much better.

Thank You.
 
Earthworms are a good food source. What are your tank parameters (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate) and temperature?
 
The temperature is 19 degrees celcios, I haven't got a tester thing to test to ph and nitrate and all but i'm pretty sure its safe as its been conditioned and is fresh and unpolluted and well filtered. His perfectly healthy himself its just when I got him his gills don't look the way they do in photos and he doesn't look as golden/yellow as they do in photos that i have seen.
 
Temperature is fine. Could you post up a photo? I would highly recommend you invest in a water chemistry test kit. Even though the water can look crystal clear, it can still contain high levels of nitrogenous wastes.
 
I would have posted a photo already if i could but I haven't got a camera. I know the water should be fine as I had fish in the tank beforehand and they lived for years until I bought a new fish and it had a disease and wiped out all my 9 fish. What testing kit would you recommend I get as I noticed your in Australia so what you can get I should be able to aswell.
 
I use the API masterkit. It served me well.
 
I am not sure on the name of the disease exactly, all I know is it made the gills go bright red and caused the fish to slow down and eventually die and no it wasn't ammonia poisoning. It happened about 3 years ago and I washed the tank exceptionally well before I put my axolotl in it.
 
Oh and out of curiosity will my axolotl eat baby fresh water crayfish or yabbies as we call them here?
 
Crayfish/yabbies will almost certainly cause harm (pincers and all) to your axie. They should not be in the same tank. Assuming the axie did swallow a small yabby, there is a high risk of impaction due to the tough outer shell.
 
Well thank you for that, nothing is in my tank just him. He seems to have a new problem his back end is floating in the air and only his front feet are on the ground and he also floats on top of the water under the water but the top of the tank and floats gets stuck and swims back down. This only started today, I'm really not having much luck with him am I?
 
I had the filter going and the water conditioner added for 2 days before I added him into it. I thought you might say it wasn't cycled to be honest and so I did a 20% water change adding more water conditioner to it of course.
 
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