Illness/Sickness: My poorly Lottie

Kerry1968

Active member
Joined
May 16, 2008
Messages
888
Reaction score
50
Points
28
Location
Bristol, England
Country
United Kingdom
Hi,
My female axolotl Lottie has lost all her gill filaments overnight!

Recently she has had quite a stressful time, she laid her second batch of eggs only four weeks after the first. I moved her to a separate tank, which I was cycling, to stop a repeat of her 'escaping' into the male Lexi's side of the tank. This tank has a more powerful filter and even though I tried to calm the outflow by putting some wood in the way, it appears that all this has proved too much for her.

It looks as though she has some fungus under what is left of her gills, so I have started to salt bath her. As she seemed so stressed in the other tank I have returned her to the original tank with Lexi and lowered the water level a little so that she can't get over the divider (Still plenty of water in the tank and it's a four footer, obviously I keep an eye on the water quality, but no problems up to now). The tank is around 16 degrees at the moment, so it's quite cold, do you think I should still put her in the fridge along with the salt baths? I don't want to stress her more by another change of scenery!

I'm so worried about my baby, it's the first time either of them has been ill. If anyone has any advice or experience with this very sudden gill loss I'd love to hear how they dealt with it and how quickly their axie recovered. Thank you.
 
I would put her into the fridge (slows down the growth of the fungus) and keep up with the salt baths.

As for the loss of gill filaments, I don't know. She sounds like she could be a bit stressed (so many babies is going to do that to anyone!). I went though a similar thing (with the gills, not the babies) with my axies a while ago, unfortunately they never recovered and I still haven't worked out why. Sorry I can't help more, Good Luck!
 
one of my friends has an axolotl and the little tree things are supposed to come off..
then they become land and water inhabitants...
 
one of my friends has an axolotl and the little tree things are supposed to come off..
then they become land and water inhabitants...

No. Axolotls are totally aquatic ALL of their lives. The gill filaments only fall off if there is a problem either with the water or the animal.
 
General chit-chat
Help Users
  • No one is chatting at the moment.
    LlamaLand: Could you send some images? +1
    Back
    Top