6 year yellow spotted salamander suddenly struggling

[Mrjoseph]

Hello I’d like to start the post with I did not rob him from the wild I found my little guy inside a tattoo shop sitting room in a fuzzy floor skinny as a twig.

For the last 6 years I’ve had him completely healthy, and at one point healed him from a fungal infection from bad soil, and then changed his tank to all aquarium stoned and. Water with natural rocks.

as of today, he’s been suddenly struggling to move around and will not eat, he’s quite lathergic and this morning I did get him to bite at a splash of water,

I’m currently have him in a smaller tank as I clean his current one as I found small worm like creatures with white bodies, at one point I shined a light into his belly region from the bottom of the pet carrier to see if I can find any inside of him, far reach I know, but in his cleaner small tank there’s no new worms.

He Will respond to crickets near him but won’t attempt to eat them, I’m considering earth worms as a next attempt to get him to eat, he’s been without food for about 1 week now. Last time I fed him was business as usual, a large cricket.

The photo was a healthy him.

 

[Roughskinned]

that is not the appropriate setup for a spotted salamander. they are really not semi aquatic and should be given just a water bowl for general purposes. Otherwise they should be kept on soil, coconut fiber mixture, or moist paper towel with some sterilized dead leaves on top and several hides. He may have stopped eating because of the improper setup, but also many of those stones look small enough that he could swallow them and not be able to pass them, ie impaction. I would switch the setup to a more appropriate one asap, and then if problems continue possibly take him to a vet.

 

[Lilibugz]

they’ll eat anything that fits in their mouth, i including gravel. He may have eaten some and became impacted. This species likes to burrow, it’d be better to keep him on some sort of soil.