Please help my little guy

[cnc8118]

Hello, I have been having some problems and am in need of some help. I am new to the forum but have read many threads and tired my best to fix things. My axolotl is having problems where for the past 5-6 weeks he has not kept down ANY food. He will spit up everything. He still eats anything put in from of him but he will regurgitate everything after 1 to 2 days after eating it completely whole, sometimes it gets spit up within hours of eating. He has never had any rocks in the tank that he could have eaten and nothing other than bloodworms, sinking carnivore pellets, and most recently worms (that he spit up), so I can't think of anything that would have constipated him. he has to be blocked up somehow. His cloacae area looks swollen, initially I thought it was just puberty stuff (he is about 1 year old now and a male as far as I was told).

The second problem is that I have not been able to keep his aquarium clean for the life of me for the past 3 months. It will always get cloudy no matter what. In that past it happened with some fake grass having too much poo in it but after removal of that the water cleared. He is going on 3 months of not having clear water. Tank is a 20 gal tank with sponge filter that was only ever rinsed in tank water, no tap water to chlorinate and kill any bacteria. stress coat added to all water ever added. I don;t know if the poor water quality hurt him (has had low levels of ammonia for the whole time and at some times it was actually quite high). At this time there is only the little guy, 2 sponge filters (added a second in desperation) and 1 rock that he likes. I took everything else out that could be causing there to be substrate to increase the bacteria in the water. I have done 5 gallon changes frequently, 1/2 tank water changes, and 3/4 water changes at various times without improvement.

He is still active but getting skinny and I am getting seriously concerned that he may die at some point with no pooping and no keeping anything down. I am at my wits end and I am afraid my son is going to lose his buddy. I am looking for any guidance I can get. I live several hours away from any city where there would even be a chance to have a vet that could see him so I am looking for any advice I can get at all to try to save this guy.

Thanks in advance for any guidance,
Chris

 

[wolfen]

get some more rocks/caves etc in the tank, the water in the tank has bacteria bloom in it, this is caused by the bacteria not being established in the filtration so the bacteria is in the water column instead. in a bare tank there is only two places for the bacteria to go.. the water and the filter.
was the tank cycled?

 

[JM29]

Hello,
Just a few remarks which, I hope, can help you :
- Your axolotl is not yet very skinny (if the photos are recent) and you're still in time to impove the situation,
- I read several times that stress coat can be toxic for axolotls,
- You seem to have a lighting but no living plants. Your axolotl certainly excretes ammonia (eventually converted into nitrates) which will benefit to algae.
- your water is cloudy because either bacteria or micro-algae. If you exclude a bacteria bloom, then maybe micro-algae.
An ammonia or nitrate test would be useful.

Why not a more natural setup ?

 

[AMurry24537]

It could also be an issue with the water quality itself out of the tap. You mentioned that you live far away from a city, so is there any chance that your water source is corrupted somehow? Does the water clear up with the water changes at all, even temporarily? Also, you mentioned that you're doing water changes "frequently," but what exactly does that mean? Once an hour? Day? Week? Month?

 

[cnc8118]

Tank was cycled and working well until the 2-3 monthe ago when it started clouding up.

Tested water, it is town water and no ammonia in it. I'm far from a city but in a town.

Water changes were initially about 20% every couple weeks and then when worse it was 20% every couple days. The water improves after the change but you can still see the cloudiness and then it increases again until I do another change. The 50% changes were about once a week lately.

As for living/natural setup we never really planned for living plants. There were more fake plants in there but I took them out because it seemed to be a collection point for debri that I thought could be the media for the increased growth I was having.

 

[wolfen]

sometimes it isn't if the tank was cycled but how it was done, if it was done using the 4ppm ammonia way then something could have happened to cause a loss of bacterial filtration, if on the other hand cycling was done using fish food, adding fish etc then the cycling was done just to be able to handle a small amount of waste and not the amount an axolotl can produce. by placing rocks etc into the tank you are giving the bacteria somewhere to settle and colonise.

 

[Autistic Catholic]

I have nothing to add to what the others have said but will say you have a light shining on him and no hides. He doesn't look sickly but might be stressed and that might be why he's throwing up food. Have you thought about adding a hid to the aquarium? Or two?