Axolotl’s have lost their gill floofs

[RAM25]

Hello and thank you for letting me join

I have two axolotl’s, both rescues. My first guy, a wild type, we’ve had for about 3/4 years and got in a very sorry state - he had half a tail, 1 leg and a fungal infection from being housed with a much bigger axie. He was also starved. We managed to nurse him back to health (it was touch and go) and he did make a great recovery (although he’s still very small and always a bit skinny). Our second, a leucistic, we have housed separately (as quite a biter despite being same size and mature, and nipped off our wild types finger).

Unfortunately back in March, our filter broke on our wild type tank without us realising - it still looked like it was pumping water. We had a fully cycled tank and changed the water once a week, syphoning out waste each day - keeping it pretty spotless. When I noticed the wild type hiding and the leucistic turning red (before we put him in his own tank) I got my API liquid test and to my horror realised the entire cycle had crashed (ammonia was around 3).

Since March we have bought a new filter and we have been doing daily water changes to keep the ammonia between 0ish and 0.25 (our water never seems to read 0) and the other tank is fully cycled. The wild type tank has still not cycled though, there is some nitrate in there, about 10ppm but our tap water seems to have some too so I’m not totally sure - I’m
a bit red green colourblind so find reading the tests pretty hard! (8 months! How?! Why?!) but both axolotl’s sort of seem on the mend. They’re both eating, swimming, seem happy. However, the ammonia spike of a few days fried off their gill filaments And they still don’t seem to be recovering. Our large 4ft tank (still cycling) has both a sponge filter and a normal in tank filter (no strong water flow to irritate him) and our other tank has an in tank filter and air stone.

Two questions then really - will the gill’s ever be fluffy again? Or is that it? They’re still long but look very sad with such sparse filaments.

Shas anyone else had a cycle take this long? I’ve usually cycled tanks in 2-3 months but I’ve never had to do a cycle with a creature in the tank before so I’m guessing the daily water changes are the problem?

Sorry for the absolute essay and thanks for reading!

Here’s a picture of my guys before the crash (note: we feed earthworms, the pellets were due to a worm delivery delay) sorry I don’t have any recent ones, we have no lights in the tanks and it’s pretty hard to see. Basically same as this but sad gills.

 

[Calgarycoppers]

Hi

How are you cycling? just hoping for it happen on its own? Adding anything?

The floofs may come back but may need some help with appropriate hardness. I add Johns but holtfreters works as well.

 

[RAM25]

Hello!

Thank you for replying. I’ve always used the pure ammonia method (Dr Tim’s ammonia) to cycle before but because it was a crash in an established tank during the summer, we’ve been cycling it with the wild type axolotl in. Of course problem with this is we’re changing water everyday and never allowing it to go above 0.25. I thought it would eventually cycle but I’ve never done a‘fish in’ cycle before and obviously not willing to risk my axis’s comfort. Usually we would have tubbed him whilst we cycled it but we’re in the UK with no air conditioning, and couldn’t keep the tubbed water below 21degrees (we had an insanely hot summer) even with a fan on it.

I didn’t know hardness effected the gills! I’ll look into those products, thank you.