Rapid Gill Loss

[Samsaxeva]

Hi,

My lovable class pet Nigal is suddenly ill. In the last 2 days he has lost all his fluffy bits near his gills, i did a water change thinking it may be the water quality. He does not appear to be off his food (could be to early to tell) but seems to want to be at the surface alot more. I did some online research and found that he will need to surface more now without his feather gill bits. I rang my local pet shop and they provided me with no help but agreed the salt bath may be the best thing incase it is a fungi.

I have decided to salt bath and fridge him. He is currently in the fridge and i am yet to do the salt bath. I may have jumped the gun with the fridging but i just didnt know what to do and the students and i are so attached to him. We would hate to loose him.

Can anyone help me, provide me with more guidence.

 

[jessicaanne]

My lovable class pet Nigal is suddenly ill. In the last 2 days he has lost all his fluffy bits near his gills, i did a water change thinking it may be the water quality. He does not appear to be off his food (could be to early to tell) but seems to want to be at the surface alot more. I did some online research and found that he will need to surface more now without his feather gill bits. I rang my local pet shop and they provided me with no help but agreed the salt bath may be the best thing incase it is a fungi.

I have decided to salt bath and fridge him. He is currently in the fridge and i am yet to do the salt bath. I may have jumped the gun with the fridging but i just didnt know what to do and the students and i are so attached to him. We would hate to loose him.

Unless there is fungi evident on the gills (fluffy white stuff) then it probably isn't necessary to do a bath salt because if it isn't fungi then you'll stress him out over nothing. You said you did a water change thinking it may be due to water quality.. Do you have a test kit to make sure the water levels are good? Photo's of his gills will also be great!

 

[Samsaxeva]

There was white fluffy cotton looking stuff on his fluffy gills when he was loosing them now there is no fluffy stuff left there is only some light coloured/discoloured bits on the ends of his stalks (Sorry for the descriptions, im not too sure of the correct terms). I did some online research and thats what made me think it could be a fungi.

I feed him live (Small) Feeder fish and live blood worms his favorites, so I thought maybe he got the fungi from the last lot of fish/worms I gave him.

I will have to take some pics tomorrow when I get back to school.

As for the test kit I had not done the test yet as in my panic he is now set up in the fridge. I can do the test tomorrow also.

Will he be okay in the fridge for now?

Cheers

 

[jessicaanne]

Oh okay, well I've never had to deal with fungi so I'm not sure if salt baths would still be beneficial at this stage or not. Someone else can hopefully help you with that. Feeder fish need to be quarantined for a minimum of 30 days in a separate tank, unless you're breeding them yourself and are sure they aren't carrying diseases etc. If he's healthy besides the gill issue then a night in the fridge shouldn't do any harm although some people may not recommend it because it's something you do when they're constipated and such. If you find that the water levels are bad when you test tomorrow, you'll have to leave him in the fridge or put him in a separate container/tank while doing daily water changes until you get the problem resolved in his current tank. I hope some of that helped and/or answered your questions!

 

[Samsaxeva]

Okay well thank-you for all your helpful advice Hopefully i can get it sorted and soon.

I did find in my research that fridging and salt baths would help with a fungus problem but there is so much info. out there it's hard to determine the best when it comes to axies.

 

[Jenste]

After you are able to post photos we will be able to have a better idea of what may be the issue.

Can you describe your tank? (size, substrate, filtration, etc) and your cleaning schedule?

 

[Samsaxeva]

I do a 20-30% water change about every 3 weeks.

As you can see from the pic i have a filter and a bare bottom tank (the rocks on the ledge are glued on). The stuff on the bottom of the tank is live blood worms.

I also did a PH water test today PH levels are fine.

 

[jessicaanne]

I'm assuming the tank has cycled if you're only doing 20-30% water changes every three weeks. Three weeks seems a long time but with only the one axolotl I could be wrong. If you haven't cycled the tank then what levels are your Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate?

 

[Samsaxeva]

The tank has cycled, am I supposed to cycle it every time i clean it? I have only had Nigal for 2-3 months everything was going nicely and i had to go away to a funeral for a week and i came back and his gills were ruined.

How often should i clean his tank?

I went to a different pet shop this afternoon for some water testing kits they only had PH in stock . I will have to track down the other tests to test the water either online or another pet store.

Any idea about his gills from the pics?

Today the pet shop had more axies in stock. Before i left for the funeral I went into the store, one axie looked so sick and the other died I told the lady how to feed the one that was left even though I have only owned an axie for about 3 months now (Newbie) with a live neon petra and he ate it right while i was in the store the poor little thing was wasting away. I seen him again today he has made a full recovery almost However they now have all the axies in a tank with snails, fish and rocks Poor babies i wish i could resuce them.

 

[jessicaanne]

Once the tank is cycled then it is cycled for good. (Unless more fish are added which will then send the tank into a mini cycle so the bio load can catch up with the added ammonia source). You should be doing water changes whenever the nitrAtes get to 40ppm on the chart. If your tank is cycled it shouldn't be showing ammonia or nitrIte levels. If your tank is taking three weeks to reach 40 then good for you, it means less work for you! However, you will need to clean up uneaten food and poop in between the major water changes. When I do this, I just siphon the gunk out which ends up being a 10L water change but other people just use a turkey baster or syringe to remove waste.

Only pH? That's strange! What kind of pet shop doesn't stock important items?!

In regards to his gills, I honestly really don't know. Hopefully the other tests can provide some insight because it sounds like a water quality issue. I'm not too familiar with this but you could try searching metamorphosis. I can't tell you if that's what yours is going through but I know that it can result from poor water quality and if an axolotl goes through that process, they lose their gills. Hopefully that isn't the case and he'll pull through! Is he still in the fridge?

Yeah I've had to bite my tongue a few times when I've seen the state of some axolotls.. It isn't fair on them but you can't buy them because you're just encouraging the sale of mistreated animals. It's just the horrible truth and some people can be so cold hearted toward animals

 

[Jenste]

The fact that you asked if you have to recycle the tank each time you do a water change worries me that you don't understand what a cycled filter truly is.

A cycled filter has a bacteria colony grown in the media which feeds off of harmful ammonia and NitrIte and breaks it down into less harmful NitrAte. This colony is very important and very sensitive. Any untreated tap water added into the tank (that contains chlorine etc) can wipe out the colony of bacteria and you are left with a filter basically just moving water and making bubbles until the colony can replenish itself. The colony can take 6-sometimes 18 weeks to grow. (living organisms grow at their own rate!)

Google the Nitrogen Cycle in fish tanks

Doing weekly water changes with treated water is your best bet for insuring a healthy tank and filtration system.

When you do have to give your filter a cleaning, swish the filter media/sponges around in a bucket of DIRTY tank water, pretty much you are just swishing off the gunk build up. You do not want to let your filter media come in contact with tap water.

If you decide you need to replace your filter media, (should occur MAYBE once every 1-2 years), it should be literally starting to fall apart. Replace in segments so you do not lose your whole colony. One part the first week, another part the second week and so on.

 

[Samsaxeva]

I did research cycling the tank and thought perhaps I needed to leave him out after cleaning the tank as I also found infomatiom about fishless cycling also and I think I confused myself alittle.

I will clean each week from now on thanks for all advice

 

[jessicaanne]

Don't worry, it is a really confusing process! A 20-25% water change a week is fine, you could probably get away with doing it fortnightly but again it all comes down to what the levels are. Keep us posted & I hope he has his fluffy gills back in no time :happy:

 

[Samsaxeva]

I still have him in the fridge and I did do a salt bath today as I wasn't sure if the white stuff on his gill stalks is fungus. Should I take him out, leave him in, do a few more salt baths? I don't want to hurt him but I don't want to do nothing incase I can help him out.

 

[jessicaanne]

I forgot to ask, what is the temperature of the tank water? I've read that high temperatures can lead to the loss of gills. I would personally leave him in the fridge because he'll have time to recuperate while you get the tank sorted. I wish I could help you determine the cause but I'm pretty new to all of this as well so I'm just helping as best as I can! However I do believe that it has something to do with the water

 

[jane1187]

Ok I'm not quite the axolotl disease expert but I have owned one for 6 years now so here's my advice.

Keep him in the fridge. It cannot hurt him at this stage as his metabolism will slow and he'll use up less oxygen. This will be beneficial as his gills will not be functioning to their best ability. DO REMEMBER to do 100% water changes with dechlorinated water daily while he is in the fridge as waste can build up quickly in the small volume of water.

It looks like there may be some remenants of fungi left on the tops of the gills on his left so I would salt bath him for a week until this looks to be cleared up. This may stress him but it will be beneficial to have all the fungi removed so that new healthy gills can regrow.

Meanwhile, ensure you continue the weekly water changes in the main tank while he is in the fridge. I wouldn't have said that 3 weeks was too long, as I do mine once a fortnight but it all depends on the number of animals and whether you have a good filtration system. I would recommend at least once a fortnight and clean your filter as described by the previous posts.

After a week of salt baths (twice per day) you should start to see some slow regrowth, or at least the wounds looking clean. After this you may want to consider returning him to his tank.

I would recommend a slight change of diet. Although I am not opposed to feeder fish I emplore you to breed your own. Set up a seperate tank if you can with guppies as they are easy to keep and breed prolifically and can provide you with regular meals. You can also monitor their health and you'll know that they are disease free. Bloodworms are good in the diet but I'd recommend frozen ones from a blister pack as you cannot always guarantee the quality of live ones. Try some earthworms too. Pellets are also good to use, but only occasionally to break up the diet and provide vitamins and minerals (as most pellets are fortified with these).

Also try to decorate his tank a little more with hiding places while he is recovering as this will reduce stress and aid healing.

Hope this helps. I also hope someone with experience of sick axolotls can confirm or contradict what I've recommended.

 

[Samsaxeva]

:happy:Thanks everyone for your advice. I have kept Nigal in the fridge and have given him salt baths etc... Today i could see the evidence of ever so slight new growth

I am now feeling confident he will be back to his usual self in no time. There still seems to be a little bit of whiteish coloured residue on the left side still, so i will keep going with the fridging and salt baths for a couple more days

Fingers Crossed

 

[Samsaxeva]

Not sure if anyone will know about snails but we had a medium sized snail in the tank and it has not come out of the shell in a very long time i have fished it out of the tank and smelt it and checked the hatch, i think it is still alive cause the smell would def tell me otherwise. But i has not moved in like a month it was quite active before hand.

But i do feed Nigal live blood worms (well i might change that now since this recent loss of gills) and i seen some protruding from the shell. This may be the reason why it wont come out, i dont know what to do to help it if that is the case.

That also got me to thinking would live blood worms cause problems to Nigals gills if while eating them they got caught in the gills?

 

[Kaysie]

Is there any reason you have the water level so low? I'm almost positive the gill loss is related to poor water quality. With such a small volume of water, you'll never really achieve a full cycle. Fill the tank near the top (leave a few inches to prevent him jumping out). Then invest in a good quality liquid reagent water quality test kit. Test regularly for ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates until your tank has cycled. You may need to do 2-3 small water changes a week, dependent on your levels.

And get that axie some hides!

 

[animal lova]

can you post more pic's as he gets better, and good luck for you and your axie.