Illness/Sickness: Chunk of fin missing

[Quentari]

So I was on holiday last week (had a fellow axolotl owner over feeding my babies) and noticed today that there's a little chunk missing out of my melanoid's tail. There was a little piece of curled up skin attached, but it fell off before I could take the picture. It doesn't seem to be hurting him, he's swimming around like normal. Just did a water check and everything's still perfect, water temp is low and his tank-mate Smiley is huge and well fed (never had any nipping before) so I was just wondering what it could be?

 

[Jen10s]

Hi there, not very experienced with regeneration but my understanding is if you keep your water clean, cool and healthy your Axies tail should heal in its own time.

If they aren't prone to nipping, perhaps the little fella injured himself on an ornament or something (maybe freaked out and took off suddenly). They don't seem terribly co-ordinated when they do this, sometimes mine go crazy and crash into things too.

 

[Quentari]

Hi there, not very experienced with regeneration but my understanding is if you keep your water clean, cool and healthy your Axies tail should heal in its own time.

If they aren't prone to nipping, perhaps the little fella injured himself on an ornament or something (maybe freaked out and took off suddenly). They don't seem terribly co-ordinated when they do this, sometimes mine go crazy and crash into things too.

Yeah mine dive like crazy after they've gulped some air lol, hopefully it was just the skull ornament. I'll let people know if it grows back, he looks funny with a little chunk missing!

 

[Chirple]

The EXACT injury (just with the cut facing the other way and a bit farther back) happened to my axolotl and he has no tank mates.

I would strongly consider tank decorations as the culprit. I did and removed everything except plants. I will be adding a terracotta pot at some point in the future (the plants are thick enough to provide some shade - and he'd nearly outgrown his old hides, anyway - I measured him and I can't believe he's 11.5"!).

As for healing it should go fine with clean water - just keep an eye out for fungal growth. Mine's tail has a bit of a battle scar now (fin is thinner there) and a bit where the regeneration pushed a flap of fin up - but he's healthy.

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

 

[pondweed]

Oh, I don't know about strange, I think he looks rather rakish... Like the marks Orca get in their dorsals. I do hope he heals up nicely and there are no fungal complications.

 

[Quentari]

I'll keep a close eye on the wound hopefully it heals up nicely