Please please please help!

[umdprevet]

My leucistic axolotl has always had health problems, since I got her. Recently she's been doing a lot better but now she's taking a turn for the worse. I started noticing three of her toes were missing, and since the area looked fine otherwise (a little bloody, but that's to come with loosing a few toes) and I let her chill in the fridge for a day and she seemed fine. Later, I noticed her other toes began turning red, as if the blood vessels inside them had burst, and other toes began falling off. I was nervous but assumed that if her toes were going to fall off, they would fall off and grow back. No harm no foul. Now, that same red burst-blood-vessel appearance has started traveling up her legs.

I've noticed that she is spending a lot of time at the surface (which she has always done, so maybe I'm being alarmist) sitting on top of the floating plants I have with her head pretty much out of the water.

Yesterday, she was swimming toward the surface and I noticed her cloaca was "open", as if it was beginning to prolapse or something but nothing was really coming out.

If anyone has any ideas or knows what I should do, please let me know! She is currently chilling in the fridge right now, but beyond that I don't know what to do. She shares a tank with a melanoid who is a big healthy monster. I just gave him a careful look over, and one of his toes is half missing, but I'm not sure if that is for the same reason. I will try to take pictures later and add them here.

Tank specs: They are in a filtered 40 gallon breeder. Ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates are all 0. pH is 7.6. Temp is 64 F.

 

[umdprevet]

This is the limb I'm most worried about. You can see the redness in the limb.

I apologize for the terrible picture quality, especially for the cloaca one. I was taking it through tupperware.

 

[TheJadeAxolotl]

Does she/he have any tankmates or anything? Any decorations cutting off the toes? Also, looks like you have a boy instead of a girl to me anyway.

 

[umdprevet]

Yes, she has a melanoid friend in the tank with her, which is what I thought was the problem initially but now that its all her toes I'm not sure that he's the one nibbling them off. That could still be a possibility though. I don't think its the decorations- I've had the same ones for more than a year and its never been a problem before.

Oops, I guess I should be saying him...that's one less thing to worry about though, thanks!

 

[TheJadeAxolotl]

Yes, she has a melanoid friend in the tank with her, which is what I thought was the problem initially but now that its all her toes I'm not sure that he's the one nibbling them off. That could still be a possibility though. I don't think its the decorations- I've had the same ones for more than a year and its never been a problem before.

Oops, I guess I should be saying him...that's one less thing to worry about though, thanks!

How long are your axies? He is a possibility. Might be stressing the other one out. I would put this one is a separate container/tank.

 

[umdprevet]

Melanoid is 7 inches, leucistic is 6. They have a 40 gallon to themselves so they do have a lot of space to spread out and get away from each other. Looking at the leucistic again it don't look like physical trauma so much as a disease of some sort. But I can't be sure.

And the leucistic is in a separate container in the fridge for now

 

[umdprevet]

Well, the leucistic just laid eggs, so we definitely have a girl on our hands...

 

[narny101]

umm wow, congratulations, perhaps that explains the problem? now you have to decide whether to keep the babies or not

 

[xxianxx]

The axolotl loks a bit on the pink side, what are the water peramiters and temp ? I would be very suprised if the actual readings are all zero as you stated, it may be worth trying a different test kit. Toes falling off can be caused by an excessive bacterial slime coat covering surfaces in the tank, its quite common in bare bottomed tanks. If you have a bare bottomed tank just wipe the floor over once a week to remove it.

 

[umdprevet]

xxianxx- Thanks for the reply! I actually just switched to a sand substrate because I was worried that perhaps it was the bare bottom tank that was causing the problem. I'm using an API freshwater test kit (not the strips) but it is a year old, do they go bad? Unfortunately I'm at college right now so it's difficult for me to get a new kit in any sort of decent time frame. The excessive bacterial slime sounds like it could be a very likely culprit- hopefully now that she's got her eggs out of the way she can dedicate her metabolism to healing instead.

narny101- Thanks! I wasn't even attempting to breed them, and wasn't even 100% sure on their genders (well, I guess I am now!) so this has come as quite a shock. It definitely explains some of the problems ("open" cloaca and staying on the plants near the surface)