Illness/Sickness: Rough Skinned Newt not eating...

[BettyBamf]

My family and I found this newt a few months ago, until now he's been perfectly fine. About a week ago he stopped eating and started losing weight. He's hasn't been as active as he usually is.
This is what he looked like two months ago:

And now this is what he looks like:

He twists like this a lot and continually tries to bury his head down.
His eyes are kinda cloudy:

And his head has slight red splotches:

Anyone have any ideas on how to help this little guy? Any insight is greatly appreciated.

 

[Kaysie]

What kind of food are you offering? What's the setup like? How warm are you keeping it?

 

[BettyBamf]

I have a feeling it was a cooling issue. I just found out my mom had but him on top of a our comcast tv box which puts out quite a bit of heat. So I've moved him off of that and away from anything warm and added a small fan to cool him off.
For food, normally we give him regular earthworms and he liked those until he stopped eating, but before that we offered him some dried brine shrimp which he didn't really like.
Habitat involves a small pool with some land area for him to lay on. About 50/50 in terms of water and land.

 

[Kaysie]

It sounds like your setup is good. Hopefully moving him to a new, cooler spot will help.

To get him to eat, you might want to keep trying earthworms, or you can try offering something like waxworms or blackworms.

 

[BettyBamf]

He seems to be a bit more active now that I've added the fan. He's shedding right now, but he doesn't seem like he wants to move long enough to get the icky skin off. I'll keep trying to get him to eat earthworms, but if that doesn't work then I'll switch to waxworms or black worms. Thank you so much for the advice

 

[Jennewt]

Is he living in water? You don't want to put a fan over a terrestrial amphibian, it will dry the moisture out of his body. Good luck with him.

 

[BettyBamf]

Yeah he mostly lives in the water. Every hour or so I go in there and drop some water all over his back to make sure he doesn't dry out.

 

[BettyBamf]

It seems like he was too far gone to fix. He passed away while I was at work today