Illness/Sickness: Both my Wilds front legs have gone manky

Yesterday while doing a waterchange i transfered both Axolotls into a smaller container. When in there my Albino kept attacking my Wilds front right leg so i split them up, fed them (ate a full frozen bloodworm block between them!) so they cant have been hungry.

Put them back into the tank and apart from the wild been unable to move its leg everything looked ok.

Checked today and to my horror both its front legs have gone white, fluffy and looking very chewed up! So iv given it a salt bath and its currently in the fridge.

Do i need to at all amputate its legs in order for them to recover? I did brush its legs when in the salt to rub the fungus off if anything, was this a good or bad idea?

But as above my main question is what shall i do about its legs? Leave them and they will recover or do them need removing?

Ill get pics if needed

Thanks

please post photos.

Manky....Kyle not sure thats a proper word haha.

Just keep doing what i told you.

Probably no need for amputation just see how they look after another salt bath tonight.

Mel

Not the best but it shows it:

They look worse than i thought!!

I'd still give another salt bath later and see how they are.
They look like they might come off themselves.

He's bigger than i thought he was. Meaning his legs are fatter...

Also is this after the salt bath or before?
Mel

This is after, Taken only a minute before i posted it,

Sorry i might have made it sound better than it is on the phone, I do think the pics make it look slightly worse. The legs are still very firmly attached, will they just drop off even if there not hanging off?

Is the right one firmly attatched? it doesn't look it on the pic. Maybe i'm seeing it wrong.

Mel

Yep both are firmly on there, It does look flappy but iv been strocking it backwards(softly) to see if it does just drop off but its fairly well attatched ATM anyway

Phone me later after the second salt bath

Mel
x

damn, poor little fella. Almost brought a tear to my eye seeing that.

I have nothing constructive to help except follow in the excellent advice of Melfly.

I certainly hope he gets better, and that the trauma of this doesn't cause any complications. Those legs do not look well and I feel they will certainly test the Axolotls regenerative abilities should they not be removed.

For future reference it may be good to take daily photos for comparison if left on, to be able to more accurately judge for improvement / degradation rather than by memory alone.

I will do Mel. Thats a good idea, ill be keeping him out the tank untill he starts to get better so ill take pics everyday as my memory isnt really that good.

Sounds daft i know but i sit there watching him and giving him alil nudge every now and again just to check hes still moving. Still swims fine, well trys to.

Keep him in cool clean water, and stop poking him!. Cover his container so it is dark. And as the others say, keep us posted.

Legs look to be getting better, from the body side anyway, they grew back pretty quick and he can now move them again.

Will be check him again tonight and see how its going

Hi Kyle,

This exact problem has happened to one of my new axos too. One of his front legs was engulfed with a cottony fungus and he stopped putting any weight on it. Despite this he was eating fine but a little lethargic.
Naturally, I freaked and went to my local aquarium to test levels etc- everything was allegedly perfect.
The assistant at the aquarium suggested an anti-fungal treatment called Pimafix (see the link below) in which the active ingredient is 'Pimenta racemosa' or Bay Oil. It says nothing about axolotls but it is used on tropical aquarium fish.
PimaFix

After about 2-3 days of treatment I noticed the fungus was completely gone from his front leg and a large chunk of his skin with the cottony fungus still attached was floating in the water. The leg that remained was a reddish colour and looked pretty raw. He still wasn't putting weight on it or using it for swimming.

I scooped out the remnants and did a 100% water change.

It's been another 4 days and with treatment it seems to be getting progressively better. My other axo is her fine cheerful self. I couldn't fridge him as I live with my family and an axolotl in the frigde wouldn't go down well.

here's my theory: It's interesting that your suffering axo is a wilde. My suffering axo is black, but with very similar spots to yours (trait of a wild). Since joining this forum and reading the posts, I'm noticing it's a pretty rare problem that is perhaps unique to wildes/ wild crosses. Just a theory as I said. I believe my little guy's fungus started from poor immunity caused by stress from strong water currents (which I'm combatting with an idea from this forum).

I really hope your little guy's legs eventually heal. I will let you know if mine's do after another round of treatment with Pimafix- it might be the right way to go for you too.

Kim

I havnt been on in about a week but things are improving, I did sadly have to remove both legs as it was showing no improvment after 2 salt baths, So i had to remove the legs to just before the fungas, then fridged him for acouple more days before a final bath just to ensure they were healed.

He has now been back in the tank for around 5 days and it moving them about fine when swimming which he wasnt doing before, and is still as gready as ever, So just a matter of letting them grow back now