Illness/Sickness: SICK BABY AXIE! Please help!!

[Velaria]

Help!!

I have a wildtype hatchling, and he's been doing fine for five days (since I got him). This morning, I noticed that the tip of his tail had become dark, and his tail had also turned up at the tip. He was barely moving, and he wasn't twtiching his gills at all. I would touch him and move him, and sometimes, he would end up upside down as a result of me moving him. If it weren't for the fact that he still twitches and moves on occasion, I would think that he was dead! But he's still alive...

Being a hatchling, he's not living in a tank, because I have an adult axie who would surely eat him, so the baby hatchling is just living in a small container. But he's living in water from my adult axie's tank, and the water conditions (PH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate) are all PERFECT and can't possibly be the cause of the problem. I've been doing 20% water changes daily, and I've been siphoning out any poop or other debris.

I've been feeding baby brine shrimp to the hatchling, and even today, he ate them, so there's nothing wrong with his diet either!

I've been keeping the baby in the fridge all day today in hopes that he'll survive. Good water, good diet, what is going wrong?

I've attached a photo of him so you can see what's happened to his tail. Like I said, it turned dark at the tip and it's curving upwards.

 

[gr33neyes]

He may just be a sickly hatchling who won't survive I'm afraid. Not all of them do. Keep doing what you are doing and he may be okay.

 

[geosheets]

I've been doing 20% water changes daily, and I've been siphoning out any poop or other debris.

Are you using tank water for the 20% changes also? Is it safe to assume you have tested the water in the container and not just the source tank? Brine shrimp will foul your water quickly. Does the container he's living in have any filtration at all? If no filtration, I personally would do 100% water changes daily.

 

[Velaria]

No, I didn't test the water in the baby's container. I only tested the tank water. I figured that if the tank water was good, then that was all that was important. Wrong, I guess.

I was actually using dechlorinated tap water for the 20% daily water changes, but I really think that the brine shrimp fouled the water!

It's so difficult to put the brine shrimp in the axie's container without getting any brine shrimp eggs in there as well, and I think that there were literally "spoiled eggs" in the water! I guess I didn't get all of the eggs out when I did my water changes

So I did a 100% water change, but NOW I see that the same thing is happening with FOUR MORE of my babies! I'm going to do 100% water changes every day, starting right now.

As far as the sick babies go, I'm going to keep them in the fridge and do 100% daily water changes. As far as feeding them, should I wait a few days? I don't want them to starve, but on the other hand, I feel like they're so fragile right now and I don't want anything to make them even more sick! And they don't have much of an appetite anyway when they're in the fridge, right? Darn those brine shrimp!

How old (or how big) do the babies need to be before they can be taken off the baby brine shrimp diet? My babies range in size (from the tip of their nose to the tip of their tail) from 5/8 of an inch to 6/8 of an inch. And what should I feed them after the brine shrimp? Live bloodworms?

If this "tail rot" problem is caused by bacteria, is there anything that I can put in the water to kill the bacteria that may still be living on the axolotl in spite of the 100% water change? Is this tail rot thing a common problem? Have you guys heard of it before? The strangest thing about it is that it seems to ONLY be affecting my wild types. I have some yellow babies and some "almost leucistic" babies (They're all white except for a few very tiny dark spots on their heads), and the only ones that have gotten sick are the wild types.

Thanks so much for your help!

 

[b00f]

are all the babies kept together or separate?

wilds have a tendency to get a lil cannibalistic


goodluck, keep up the water changes

 

[geosheets]

I'm no expert on axolotl's but keep changing the water. 100% daily with dechlorinated tap water will be fine. If you're keeping the axies in the fridge be sure to keep a jug of water for the next days water changes in there as well. You don't want to give them a temperature shock.

They do still eat, so make some food available for them. The brine shrimp will not be a water quality issue if you change the water daily.

I would not recommend putting anything in the water for bacteria... just good clean water for now.

Live blood worms would be fine for their next foods but you probably won't find them. Live blackworms are more readily available in the US. I think you can start feeding them small worms somewhere around 1 inch, after the front legs develope. There's more info at this link on feeding juvies. http://www.axolotl.org/rearing.htm

 

[Velaria]

Thanks! The babies are being kept completely separate because I don't want any cannibalism going on!

Although they're not an inch long yet, I have noticed front limbs on many of them. Is this the general rule? Once you see the front limbs, you can feed them bloodworms or blackworms?

 

[Kaysie]

You can switch them to larger food whenever they're big enough to eat it. I personally fed mine daphnia for the first month, then switched to chopped blackworms. Live food is fine, even if they don't have leg buds.

 

[Velaria]

I'm so happy to say that the babies are doing much better now! Their tails are looking better and they're moving around normally. They're not eating much, if at all, but that's probably due in part to the fact that they're fridged. Thank you so much for helping!

So my plan is to keep them fridged until their tails look totally normal. I'm doing 100% daily water changes and I'm feeding them baby brine shrimp once a day. The water changes happen in the morning, so they can have half a day with totally clean water, and they're fed at night, so they can have all night long to eat the brine shrimp before I change the water again the next morning. This system seems to be improving their health a lot. Does it sound like a good regimen to you guys?

Thanks again!

 

[Kaysie]

Brine shrimp can foul the water within a few hours. You shouldn't leave them in the water overnight.

 

[Velaria]

Brine shrimp can foul the water within a few hours. You shouldn't leave them in the water overnight.

Thank you for that info! I just wanted to give the axies the opportunity to eat all of them, so that's why I left them in there overnight. So how long would you suggest I wait before I change the water?

 

[Kaysie]

A couple of hours (2, 3 maybe). It really depends on how much water you have, how many axolotls you have, and how much brine shrimp you put in.