Is it too late?

[a.]

Lastnight when I checked on my axies they were fine, but when I saw them when I came home this afternoon they looked like this:

These axolotls seem much more trouble then they are worth, every two weeks either one of them has something wrong with them. The temperature is always around 19 degrees, PH is fine and I offer food everyday aswell as changing around 1/2 the water every saturday. Are they always like this or is it just the ones I had to buy? BTW I just moved them to that tank, and added fungus removal while I clean the tank out.

 

[leah]

What is "fine?" What are your ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate readings? How long have you had these two? Have you added anything new to the tank recently? Any feeder fish that could be introducing illness?

 

[kaysie]

If the tank is cycled, you really only need to change 20% of the water once a week. This could cause major stress, leading to fungal or bacterial problems.

 

[michael]

They look pretty skinny and stressed. You should medicate them. Salt bath, Furan 2 or something like that. Keep them cold. The shape they are in popping them in the refridgerator probably wouldn't hurt. You need to balance your aquarium to keep ammonia down. Large water changes will help drop the ammonia but are not the best way to approach. I like some good biological filtration.
When they start eating well I'd step up their food a little. I think your main problem is water quality. Of course if you are feeding them live food or handling to much that could also be a problem,

 

[john]

Those axolotls couldn't have been fine - they're so skinny it's not right.

 

[a.]

I had the water at 11 degrees lastnight to relieve the stress, but when I got home today they had died.

btw, they were always that thin.

(Message edited by Cavsta on November 24, 2004)

 

[john]

If they were always thin, they weren't always healthy. There's some long term stress factor at play here that you need to work out before you keep axolotls again. Do you keep them in a tank with a noticeable water flow? Does the temperature fluctuate throughout the day and night?

 

[a.]

Yeah, the pump was always abit too strong, so I attatched a pipe to it to the flow enters out above the water making little splash. The temperature had been around a steady 20 degrees until the past few weeks where it has been hot and has been getting to around 25 but i've been putting bottles of ice to counter this.

 

[john]

Unless you're very careful, and good at it, putting bottles of ice in the tank could cause temperature fluctuations that are worse than keeping the axolotls at 25 degrees. I bet this is the problem. Healthy axolotls, with no other stresses around, should be able to cope with between 25-27 degrees C for short periods of time (a few hours during the hottest part of the day), but most people have other stress-causes in their aquariums that only have a noticeable effect when the axolotls are already stressed by the heat.

 

[andre]

The water should not circle more than once per hour. .... that means : if your tank is 50 Liters, the filter shouldnt pump anything more than 50L/Hour.

Its hard to tell from the pictures, but their gills look(ed) terrible (esp on pic #4).

I think the temp drop from 20 to 11 almost overnight almost surely killed them ! ... Imagine how you'd feel if you were living in Sahara and the next day you'd be in Iceland.

 

[richard]

I hear Iceland is actually quite nice, and Greenland is really the cold one. Supposedly they named them that way so when people saw it on a map, they would steer their boats away. I guess they wanted the place to themselves.

 

[mik]

Wow they look so stressed.

They will take months to feed up Cavsta. Feed plenty of worms they are quite fatty. If you can feed morning only for a week and step-up to morning and night you may see a difference in a few weeks time.

Follow other's advice get tank condition right, good temp, no current and not too much water changed at one time. Good luck...I think we would like progress reports on how you get on. Perhaps you will be able to determine exactly what is wrong at some point.

 

[kim]

Mikki,

They died

 

[mik]

Shame...poor things!

 

[a.]

But this just happened overnight. I feed them the night before and they were fine and when I saw them the next afternoon they looked like that, gills turned over, all covered in fungus and veiny.

 

[michael]

It appeared to happen overnight. Those animals did not get that skinny overnight. Their is some problem in the way you are keeping the animals that finally manifested itself. I'm sorry for your loss.

 

[john]

Looking that thin, I'm surprised they lasted as long as they did.

 

[a.]

How fat should they be?

 

[john]

There are plenty of photos of healthy axolotls on the forum. Take a look. Your two in the photos are literally skin and bone as far as axolotls go.

 

[john]

Here are two healthy female axolotls to save you looking around: