Oh, lmao! That's a weird visual glitch or a tiny fragment of driftwood that just positioned itself very conveniently. Zoom in and you'll see.
Puck has never had black eyes. They've always been vaguely pink, and you can hardly discern them at a distance. My mother has joked that I should get a sharpie and give him proper eyes. I've attached a photo from about half a year ago to reference.
He's always been a gold axolotl. Speckles and everything.
then it seems to look like normal coloration based on photos though veininess can indicate bacterial infection or chemical burn
Is it severe enough to merit fridging, or should I wait it out a bit? A chemical burn would be odd, I retested the water chemistry this morning and found nothing off.
Other factors could be impaction or injury.
This seems possible, though I've had some strange experiences with Puck feeding schedule-wise. From what I gleaned, healthy axolotl body weight/size should be slightly thinner than the head, to slightly thicker than the head. Puck's never gone underweight (though he has gotten a little fat at one point), and he's gone between every other day to once a week when it comes to earthworms, with the longest stretch being a worrying ten days, after which he continued to eat every 3-4 days with no issue. Tried to feed him again this morning, and that would make it about the fourth day.
The last possible thing I can consider based on what you linked is that perhaps there's some minor stress from the introduction of new elements to his tank. I've added a portion of plants and stones and lighting. But the weird part about that is that he really seems to like hanging out near them, and blithely ignores the lighting and opts not to use either hide provided when the "daytime" cycle is on. So if he's stressed, he's not showing it (no frantic swimming, gills not curved forward).
Maybe this is normal and I'm worrying over nothing?
