Brown axolotl turned into pink/white axolotl...

[jo]

Hiya

One of my axolotls has turned from a brown/black mottled colour into a pink colour all over. He looks exactly the same as our other axolotl that is pink/white with black eyes. Is this normal? He seems fine apart from the colour change, and is eating fine etc...

It just seems really weird that he has completely gone from one colour to another...

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[ian]

Hi Jojo
Never heard of that before,i mainly keep newts and salamanders but someone else might have seen or heard of this happening to axies.It certainly is'nt in any of my books.How old is he or she.

 

[jo]

Hi, thanks for replying, he is about 2 years old now, i'm not ure how old he was when we brought him but he was very small and now is quite large! I actually couldn't believe it when he changed colour, it happened within the space of a week aswell, he seems fine now though!

 

[kapo]

Hi jojo do you have a photo of what he looks like before and after? Just curious.

None of our wildtypes have done that, but one of our leucs (white with black eyes) when it was still young went a very greyish/ghostly white colour completely even lost colour in its gills. It was like it was anaemic. No colour even when it was eating.

 

[alex]

has the temp in your tank changed much?

 

[WimL]

This just happened to my axolotl! Strangest thing. Over the course of a few weeks he faded from the normal mottled brown to almost pure pink/white. He still has black eyes and a few freckles where his original mottling was darkest, but I think those freckles are fading as well. He seems perfectly healthy otherwise... He's about 4 or 5 years old, I think.

 

[qannp]

Are you sure that they're not covered in bacterial lawn? Maybe you want to send pap-tests to a a lab, just to be on the safe side?

 

[blushed]

Sounds on the bad side. There was just an Axxie who lost all of their color and died not too long ago on the forum. Keep a close eye... If your axxies stay healthy seems something like a goldfish as it grows and is black, sometimes they turn all orange, some orange turn white. Genetic anomaly?

 

[WimL]

Following up, my mysteriously-pale axolotl is still pale and seems healthy. The remaining freckles have mostly faded away. He now looks like an ordinary leucistic axolotl as far as I can tell (just comparing to pictures of leucistic lotls on the internet). It's definitely a change in pigmentation, not just something covering the skin.

I didn't think leucism could show up several years into adulthood like this, but ... ??? ... Maybe I should try breeding him and see if the trait persists

 

[Hoagii]

What an interesting story! I'd love to see some before and after pictures. My own axie was a little darker when she was teeny and lost her color slowly as she aged, but it's crazy that it happened so fast for yours. If you do breed him, let us know what you find out!