Illness/Sickness: Gill feathers gone, lack of appetite

[labyrinth]

Hello all,

I'll try and make this as succinct as possible, me and my partner picked up two lotls exactly 3 weeks ago today, I having never even heard of axolotls before and she having owned two some decades previous. The car journey was about an hour and rather bumpy, I held them out in front of me for the entire way trying to stabilise them but I imagine it can't have been the most relaxing thing for them. Got them home and immediately started setting up their tank with minimal changes, introduced them slowly after treating the water and adjusting the temp.

They seemed happy enough for a couple of days but there would always be something that would worry me, doing research I learnt quickly that most curious things are just usual axolotl behaviour. I've included some pictures so you can see for yourself and make judgements on how and if we are caring for them correctly.

Tank set up before the move

Female before the move

male before the move

them both together after the move with their old sponge filter

she seems happy enough a week after the move gills still feathery

current tank set up as it is now with the new Hydor 350 canister filter

them both currently feathers on the gills stripped

So basically I've tested the water with a liquid kit, PH is sitting on 7.5 right where they like it, temperature is 16 the lower end of comfortable and no ammonia nitrite and low levels of nitrate but the new filter hasn't fully cycled for the biological media and it said that this can cause a spike in nitrate. I changed the filter over about a week ago and at first couldn't seem to sort the current out, it was too powerful, in the end I drilled bigger holes and extended the spray bar, also turned it against the wall and now there's no current, I also put black paper around the back and sides of the tank to shield them from light because they were always trying to hide.

They lost their appetite about a week ago as well and only in the past couple of days has the female started eating again, probably because of the diet change. They were fed on home made frozen cubes before we got them and we took that same food for them but eventually changed it to little axolotl pellets, once they stopped eating we tried frozen blood worm cubes and that seems to have interested the female but the male still hasn't eaten as far as I'm aware, he's looking skinny. I've just bought some fine sand substrate that I'm going to replace the fake grass with, so it'll make maintaining the water easier. I've been doing regular 20% water changes over the past couple of days just to make sure. I'm a bit lost really don't know why they aren't as perky as before and almost seem scared when I'm around them.

Any advice and insight would be greatly appreciated, thank you in advance for taking the time to read through, hopefully I've been informative enough!

 

[Hayleyy]

Since your water parameters are okay it may be the stress from the move. I'm not sure what else would be doing it, it doesn't seem like you have too much oxygen in the water. Do you have that sponge filter? If you do, use it in addition to your other filter. That may help.
Try getting some nightcrawler worms, they're the best option for diet and axies love them.
The last pic isn't loading for me so I can't see what they're like now, can you try and attach it another way?
BTW I LOVE the hide with the grass on it.

 

[labyrinth]

Hi Hayley, thank you for responding, how do you mean the water doesn't seem too oxygenated, I thought if anything the new filter would oxygenate it more, has a lot more flow, before it was just the occasional bubble breaking on the surface. I read something today that sad the chlorine from tap water can burn them off, I'm like 90% sure I've been conditioning the water correctly but now that has got me second guessing myself.

I just switched them over to a sand substrate, they actually seem a lot more at ease, think I'm just going to monitor them for the next week or so, testing the water and trying to encourage the male to eat with some nightcrawlers. Thank you for the tip, and yeah the pipe is pretty cool can't take credit for it though! It's just a bottle with the top and bottom cut off and wrapped in that fake grass stuff, quite nifty.

Took some better pictures when I had them isolated during the sand installation, hopefully they can give an insight to their health.

thanks again!

 

[DSaxolotl]

What are you using as dechlorinator? I have found that Seachem Prime works wonders

Btw are you sure you have zero ammonia? I would double test that. Can you post picture of your test results?

 

[labyrinth]

Hey Sax,

Thanks for taking an interest, I've done two tests in the past 2 days and I'll do another tomorrow, was going to take a pic last test, wish I did now but yeah positive that there's no ammonia, the colour chart for no to low levels is yellow to orange and it's a very pale yellow in the test tube each time but I'll upload the results of the tests tomorrow. And the water treatment is AquaCare tap water conditioner.

cheers!

 

[DSaxolotl]

Alright just making sure. Something must be off that much gills drop together with lack of appetite.

Have you always used that water conditioner?

For food try the JBL axolotl pellets. Mine love them.


Btw how did you cycled your tank so fast? 3 weeks is not a lot of time. So unless you cycled your tank beforehand or had already seeded biological media?

 

[labyrinth]

We just moved the setup with the already cycled water and filter, admittedly the old filter got replaced after two weeks and the new canister filter hasn't cycled. So only mechanical filtration going on at the moment, is that a major problem? The water parameters and temp are on point, I thought with regular 20% water changes I could keep it stable until the biological filtration builds up. In hindsight I should have left the old filter in as well to speed things along. Now that I've got everything settled, with the new substrate, I'm going to encourage the biological filtration along with some AquaSafe. Any suggestions on what to do are always welcome I just want them to be as happy and healthy as possible.

 

[labyrinth]

Always used that water conditioner, the male has lost his appetite and the female has started eating at her normal healthy rate now. But both of them have the gill feather issue.

 

[DSaxolotl]

Nitrates will be used by plants if you had any and water changes.
Aside from that, anaerobic bacteria is the only thing that can lower/consume it "naturally".

So there will not be much of a "spike" really. Depending on your bio load and your beneficial bacteria this will go up. Only way for you to lower it is highly planted tank or a lot of water changes.

I see black tips on their legs, on both of them ( yes sometimes this is associated with "maturity" but more often than not if you check ammonia burns it will show like this), and this to me combined with the severe gill loss and appetite loss suggests ammonia build up or spike. Take into consideration you had them for 3 weeks and no prior tank cycle it seems kinda unlikely to have zero ammonia and zero nitrites. Especially with 2 axies of that size in the tank.

Cycled tank will have both ammonia and nitrites to zero and only nitrates on the charts which points to fully cycled tank but something here does not adds up.

I see that you try to do the right thing and want them to give a good care but yeah something is of.

//edit on pictures from before, you cant really see the black finger tips so we might be onto something here

What does your tap water tests like? Ammonia/Nitrite/Nitrate/PH wise?

All the ornaments are they also fish safe plastic? The grass, the pipe? etc?

To be sure I would get bottle of Seachem Prime and maybe use that for a bit as it helps locking down ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate temporarily and I would up my water changes on a daily bases 50% until some improvements are shown.

 

[labyrinth]

The black finger tips? I thought that just meant sexual maturity? As far as the ornaments I'm not 100% the pipe is just PVC and the grass is gone besides on the remaining pipe, that is made out of a bottle which the last owner had in there, eliminating that as a possible cause for the gills. I'll test the tap water and then the aquarium water tomorrow and post results, along with what products I'm using to treat the water and what I'm using to feed them. Also don't know why I didn't mention this but went I installed the new filter the flow was really high and must have kicked up a lot of dirt and with it loads of tiny white worms, I did a little research and it said that they weren't harmful to the axolotls and that you can reduce the numbers by cutting off their food source, the axolotls diet, that wasn't hard with the loss of appetite. Could these worms be some how cleaning or fouling the water? since I adding the sand and doing daily 20% water changes I can say that the worms have been reduced considerably maybe even gone?

Thanks for the interest and I'll make sure you get as much information as possible so you can find the issue.

 

[DSaxolotl]

Cant say for sure about the worms without decent picture of them.

As for the black fingertips , in healthy axies yes, but if you research ammonia burns esp on white axies you will notice all of them will have black tips even if they are much younger than "sexually mature" ones.

And in this case we have pictures from 3 weeks ago and now, I highly doubt its a coincidence or that they matured sexually all of the sudden now when we have other symptoms that are not normal aka gill loss.

How old are your axies and what is their length like?

 

[Hayleyy]

By too oxygenated I mean the over saturation of oxygen, which can lead to gill loss. From your pics it looks like the oxygen is just coming from water movement off the filter, so there wouldn't be any over saturation. Just ruling that out as a reason
Make sure the water flow from the filter is dispersed so you reduce the current in the water. You can tie a sponge to it, which will help a lot.
I'm with DSaxolotl, something isn't adding up haha. There could be an issue with the cycle

 

[Bellabelloo]

I wonder if its a change of water coming from different areas?. Did you pick up the axolotl locally?

 

[labyrinth]

Update!

They were 6 months old when we got them so pushing 7 months, they're between 5-6 inches head to tail. The water hardness could have changed, we drove over 40 miles for about an hour or so. Since changing the sand I've noticed their behaviour has perked up a bit, they're more active and don't seem as startled by movement, they're both sitting in the feeding dish at the moment however I don't think the male has had anything to eat. At least they're in the dish and hopefully it'll click with him like it has her! Going to get some live nightcrawlers, any suggestions, I saw that Canadian Nightcrawler (Lumbricus terrestris) are polled as most preferred but I'd like to set up a farm to make it sustainable...not for the worms :O and that Red Wriggler (Eisenia foetida) were faster at breeding.

I've done the water tests and recorded it for you, I should note that to my eyes it's all in the correct ranges, I realised halfway through that I had my phones blue light filter on, so the colour change from the tap to the tank is me turning the blue light filter off. Bit annoying but it took me a while to get to this point and I'd already poured the first batch away, not to mention my cat smashing one of the test tubes

Their current food and water conditioners

Test kit chart

PH test results

Ammonia test results

Nitrite test results

Nitrate test results

I've noticed they're coming of for a gulp of air more often is this because their feathers are missing?

Thanks for the interest it means a lot.

 

[labyrinth]

So I've just tried to feed the male pellets again and I'm reminded why it doesn't work, he is really bad at catching them! The female can literally snap an inch either side of her head and keep it down, whereas when he snaps he usually drops it when he goes to swallow it further or you know just lets them go right past him and does nothing, hoping with a worm there's no wriggling room...

Really...

 

[Hayleyy]

Different tap water may be contributing. Maybe it will take a bit of getting used to? I know water softness/hardness can affect them, but I haven't had any experience with this so if someone else could suggest how to test and what to do?
I'm using african nightcrawlers (I think), but any of the nightrcrawlers should do fine.
The tests don't look too bad, does your kit have a "high pH" one as well? Test that if you can, because a really high pH can make any ammonia in the tank affect axolotls more.
It is normal for them to go up to the top and gulp for air

 

[DSaxolotl]

Well your tests shows everything good I suppose. Even your nitrates are super low which you dont see it often i suppose. You must change water very often.

Not sure what else can be , 7 months is not sexually active for the black toe tips on both of them. So best I have right now is at some point you had ammonia spike that seems to not be the case anymore.
Which means if your water stays like this their gills should come back. IF something else is not the problem. Hope all goes well.

 

[RoreyRoreyRorey]

Well your tests shows everything good I suppose. Even your nitrates are super low which you dont see it often i suppose. You must change water very often.

Not sure what else can be , 7 months is not sexually active for the black toe tips on both of them. So best I have right now is at some point you had ammonia spike that seems to not be the case anymore.
Which means if your water stays like this their gills should come back. IF something else is not the problem. Hope all goes well.

Hey just curious, does black toe tips mean they are sexually active? My tiger salamander larva Toothless has them. Is it still possible he will become terrestrial? I posted a picture in my most recent thread if that’d help you determine

 

[DSaxolotl]

Well in more light colored ones yeah it can be a sign some will show it sooner than later. Depending on the development progress and other factors.

But in this case all things considered i think it was not the case combined with all the symptoms ex. gill loss in such short time. And I have seen that in even smaller/younger axies where ammonia has spiked. Sure there has been reports of them maturing sexually at 5 months but that's just pushing it... most axies are not even full grown at that age. Ofc theres exceptions.

I will reply to your thread to not hijack this one.

 

[labyrinth]

Another update!

Hello again, thought you might appreciate an update on their health, we've made some big changes in the past 3 weeks, they're completely fed on nightcrawlers now, one a day! Youre right hayley they love them! Took a bit of getting used to feeding them live worms, a brutal reality. And moved them from a 120l to a 300l tank, literally took them two days and they've only gone and bred! Feathers have come back and now mating, I'd say two very happy lotls!

Thanks again for all your advice, anyone want some eggs? Lol