Not eating, veiny body

[JennyEN]

Hi guys,

Sorry for the long post; I’m looking for a bit of advice on a (possibly) poorly axolotl…

One of my 4-year old female leucistics has not eaten anything for a week. Usually, she’s hand-fed one small live nightcrawler per day (cultured in my own worm bin), but over the last week she’s been turning her face away and swimming off, not even trying to gulp at it.

Alongside this, I’ve noticed her gills are much redder than her tankmate’s and her veins are becoming more prominent in her tail and back (I’ve attached a pic of the veins, with another picture comparing her to her tank mate, another female leucistic. The ill one is on the right, half under the hide).

She’s alright in herself, plodding around the bottom of the tank and looking up at me as I walk past, but I’m worried that she’s getting thinner and I don’t want to see her get super-poorly really quickly. So I’m wondering what you guys think the cause might be, and how I can help her get better.

Her water conditions are okay (see below), so I think it might be a bacterial infection (though I have no idea how she could have caught it!). I live in the UK, so I can’t get antibiotics like Furan-2 unless I import from the US, which takes up to 1 month! We're also on lockdown here because of the pandemic, so visiting a vet might be tricky. Are there any other alternatives I can use? I was looking at Myxazin, but it says it contains malachite green…? Would fridging be an option, or should I wait until it’s more obvious what the problem is?

Thanks so much, and sorry again for the long post!



All tank details/parameters I can think of are below:

• Ammonia: 0ppm
• Nitrites: 0ppm
• Nitrates: 50ppm (this is today’s reading – the day before my weekly water change)
• pH: 6.8
• GH: 125ppm mg/l
• KH: 100ppm mg/l
• Temperature: 18 degrees
• Water changes: 20% weekly
• Tank Size: 125 litres
• Water current: None (I zip-tied a filter sponge over the filter spray bar, so the water is dispersed)
• Tank light: None, its open top, with a mesh cover.
• Tank contents: Air pump, 200l filter, 2 female xolotls, sand substrate, a granite hide, marimo moss balls, java moss, and a few sporadic snails.

 

[JennyEN]

Guess this one was a tough one to diagnose!! I'll give an update on her condition so anyone with similar issues will know what I've done…

10th April: Gil wouldn’t eat her daily worm, and started to get veins on her back

17th April: After 7 days of turning away from her daily worm, I took her out of her usual tank and fridged her at 6 degrees in a tub of bottled water, a drop of API Stress Coat and a drop of Myxazin. She stabilised then, but wasn’t getting any better, and still wasn't eating.

21st April: After daily (bottled) water changes with drop of Myxazin and no change in her pink and veiny appearance, I took her to an exotic zoo vet specialist (only 40 miles away!). The vet suspected it was a bacterial infection of some kind and I was given seven days' worth of baytril injections to give daily while she was still in the fridge. The vet just said to inject into her limbs and rotate a limb each day, so that’s what I did – though she hated it (‘feisty’ is an understatement here!). She got a couple of blood blisters on her back from sloshing around the tub during the vet trip and started shedding her slime coat too, which worried me a bit.

26th April: Still no change to her pink and veiny appearance, and she was zooming around the tub in the fridge and was still losing weight. I figured the antibiotics would have started working by now and she’d be feeling better and might start eating if I warmed her up and put her back in her tank. So I started doing daily water tub changes with increasing proportions of her actual tank water (which by now had already had a couple of 20% water changes). This tank water was taken and fridged the day before, so the water was the same temperature as the fridge.

28th April: The day before the last injection, I took her out of the fridge and put her tub next to her usual tank to get her temperature back up overnight. She was still pretty veiny along her back, but there was less slime coat shedding. She still had no interest in food.

29th April: I gave her the last injection and dropped her straight back into her usual tank with her tank mate (I did a 20% water change on this tank beforehand with the bottled water I’d been using for her fridge tub). She wouldn’t take any food still, so I thought I’d give her another week before going back to the vets.

4th May: Most of the veins had by gone now and she was almost back to her usual white colouring, BUT I’d been offering her daily worm and some axolotl pellets I bought, and she was half-heartedly snapping at them, but still not eating. So, I attempted a force feed using a syringe and watery mashed up pellets. I pulled her back out of the tank and into a tiny tub and managed to get about 2ml of pellets into her before she thrashed herself away. Then she blew the lot back into the tub. I had to settle for syinging the rest around her mouth and hoping that she'd accidentally eat some. So that was a failure!

5th May: Finally, success! She must have not wanted a repeat of yesterday, and finally snapped at her worm and actually ate it! I’m hoping this episode is over now, and she’ll start to gain weight and go back to her old self. Time will tell, I guess. Oddly, she’s become super-attached to her tank mate now (another female leucistic) and, where before they were usually found at opposite ends of the tank, they now sit side by side or on top of each other. Fingers-crossed though, she’s on the mend!

Sorry again for the long post – just thought the details might help somebody if they were going through the same thing

 

[faebugz]

Guess this one was a tough one to diagnose!! I'll give an update on her condition so anyone with similar issues will know what I've done…

10th April: Gil wouldn’t eat her daily worm, and started to get veins on her back

17th April: After 7 days of turning away from her daily worm, I took her out of her usual tank and fridged her at 6 degrees in a tub of bottled water, a drop of API Stress Coat and a drop of Myxazin. She stabilised then, but wasn’t getting any better, and still wasn't eating.

21st April: After daily (bottled) water changes with drop of Myxazin and no change in her pink and veiny appearance, I took her to an exotic zoo vet specialist (only 40 miles away!). The vet suspected it was a bacterial infection of some kind and I was given seven days' worth of baytril injections to give daily while she was still in the fridge. The vet just said to inject into her limbs and rotate a limb each day, so that’s what I did – though she hated it (‘feisty’ is an understatement here!). She got a couple of blood blisters on her back from sloshing around the tub during the vet trip and started shedding her slime coat too, which worried me a bit.

26th April: Still no change to her pink and veiny appearance, and she was zooming around the tub in the fridge and was still losing weight. I figured the antibiotics would have started working by now and she’d be feeling better and might start eating if I warmed her up and put her back in her tank. So I started doing daily water tub changes with increasing proportions of her actual tank water (which by now had already had a couple of 20% water changes). This tank water was taken and fridged the day before, so the water was the same temperature as the fridge.

28th April: The day before the last injection, I took her out of the fridge and put her tub next to her usual tank to get her temperature back up overnight. She was still pretty veiny along her back, but there was less slime coat shedding. She still had no interest in food.

29th April: I gave her the last injection and dropped her straight back into her usual tank with her tank mate (I did a 20% water change on this tank beforehand with the bottled water I’d been using for her fridge tub). She wouldn’t take any food still, so I thought I’d give her another week before going back to the vets.

4th May: Most of the veins had by gone now and she was almost back to her usual white colouring, BUT I’d been offering her daily worm and some axolotl pellets I bought, and she was half-heartedly snapping at them, but still not eating. So, I attempted a force feed using a syringe and watery mashed up pellets. I pulled her back out of the tank and into a tiny tub and managed to get about 2ml of pellets into her before she thrashed herself away. Then she blew the lot back into the tub. I had to settle for syinging the rest around her mouth and hoping that she'd accidentally eat some. So that was a failure!

5th May: Finally, success! She must have not wanted a repeat of yesterday, and finally snapped at her worm and actually ate it! I’m hoping this episode is over now, and she’ll start to gain weight and go back to her old self. Time will tell, I guess. Oddly, she’s become super-attached to her tank mate now (another female leucistic) and, where before they were usually found at opposite ends of the tank, they now sit side by side or on top of each other. Fingers-crossed though, she’s on the mend!

Sorry again for the long post – just thought the details might help somebody if they were going through the same thing

Thank you very much for the write up, and sorry that you had to go it alone! I'm so glad your axolotl is okay!! And it sounds cute that they're friends now, is the other as interested in her company?

 

[JennyEN]

Thanks for the reply! And yep, the other one, Oz, seems to be pretty happy with the new arrangement! Oz loves attention (see my profile pic!!), but didn’t like interacting with Gil because Gil is shy and a bit grumpy and will bite at anything (Oz has lost a leg twice!). Now Gil’s mellowed and doesn’t seem to want to bite as much, Oz is enjoying the company

I suspect it might go back to normal when Gil’s appetite fully returns though…

 

[faebugz]

Ah that sounds adorable, maybe her brush with death and time in the lock-up (fridge) has made her appreciate the companionship more x)