Illness/Sickness: A terrible morning!

[suztor]

oh man where to start?!

I wake up this morning take a shower and style my hair (which I never do) I'm set to make it a good day. Go down stairs and do a head count and one is missing! Its an adult male my sister got me. Luckily its a hardwood floor and i just followed the edges and found a nearly dry and fur covered newt! Threw him in quarentine tub pulled off the fur and dust and continued my head count and find my darwin is belly up at the bottom of the tank but alive. I pull her out and put her in a quarentine tank too, she looks like shes in pain, her back legs are all gnarly lookin clamping down and she rolled over and opened her mouth not sure what for. Shes looks gravid, not bloated can something be going wrong with egg laying?

Bahhh i.m expecting to come home to some other disaster at lunch.



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[tmarmoratus]

Can you tell us more about what conditions your newts are kept in? What the water temps are? If you use a light for the enclosure? Do you have any substrate in the tank that could have been swallowed and caused impaction?

 

[suztor]

Shes kept in a ten gallon with no substrate just floating plants and a moss tile. With a filter and some hides, only thing that has changed recently is I started feeding her live tubifex worms.

I'll be checking the water parameters tonight when I buy a new water test kit.

There is a fan blowing on the water 24 / 7 keeping the water around 65 degrees.


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[Molch]

is it possible she has shedding problems - it sounds as though she may be "stuck" half-way through a shed?

Also, do you have a lid for the tank to prevent future escapes?

 

[tmarmoratus]

Pictures are worth 1,000 words. Upload a couple if you can.

 

[suztor]

I'm getting a cooler that I can make it so that no one can escape. Right now i have 2 quarentined in a pull along cooler 1 quarentined in a foam cooler 2 quarentined in a shipping cooler in tuppaware (broken leg and sick darwin) and 2 juvies in a little tank.

I have 2 sets of 3 new fbn all in quarentine in preparation for stocking my new tank

Normally Darwin is in her 10 gallon. Im turning into a crazy salamander lady! Luckily this chaos is only for one month so I can make sure my new guys aren't sick and hopfully be done with my build so everyone can move into their big home!

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[Molch]

definitely make sure you have lids on all of those. Whenever you walk away for 5 minutes, that's enough for any of them to climb out....

 

[suztor]

I had the pull along cooler cracked open for the air hose to run and the bugger snuck out.

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[suztor]

I must be a terrible newt mom

I think darwin is dead pretty much unresponsive except for the tail wiggling side to side slowly randomly... could it be a death reflex/twitch?

:'(

 

[suztor]

ok so I've come home and checked on darwin, still slowly wiggling her tail but definitely not moving.

I've tested my water
Ammonia some where between 0-0.25ppm
nitrate- 0
nitrite-0
pH between 8.2 & 8.4 that is insanely high!!!! comes out of the tap like that (I tested it) is that normal?

That can't be good for the newts! how do i bring it down?

 

[suztor]

Her tail stopped twitching last night
So to be sure, I put her in the freezer this morning just in case, wouldn't want her to suffer longer in a hot smelly trashcan in her last moments

I need to figure out what I'm doing wrong cuz this makes me feel terrible I was so upset last night and this morning.

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[Crippster]

Her tail stopped twitching last night
So to be sure, I put her in the freezer this morning just in case, wouldn't want her to suffer longer in a hot smelly trashcan in her last moments

I need to figure out what I'm doing wrong cuz this makes me feel terrible I was so upset last night and this morning.

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I can't tell you what's going wrong... maybe take a few pictures with your fancy ADR6300?

Also, don't feel bad this time but next time try not to euthanize your little guys in the freezer... it's not exactly painless.

Read up on caudata.org/cc for more info on proper ways to euthanize them as well as ideal tank setups, food, ect. that may point you in the right direction of what's up.

 

[suztor]

I've torn down the set up did a salt scrub with very hot water and am attempting to restart the tank and cycle it.

All my others are in quarentine (for being new)

I'm getting closer to the end of a big build and am trying to get stuff in my temp tank cycled so i can use some bacteria (water/decorations rocks, not gravel) from there to cycle my new build quicker.

As for the freezer I will look into other ways but i'm pretty sure she was dead, it was just for good measure.

Thanks for all the help guys, it's really appreciated.

Lol my ADR6300 is my android cell phone, which takes ok pics but not the best.

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[theJATM]

i almost used the freezer to euthanize my axolotl (reynolds) myself a few days ago. i used to keep chameleons, and obviously they are very different creatures, but thats what the books i had on them suggested. i figured the same would be true for amphibians.

sorry to hear about this though.