sugarplumfairy
New member
Hello,
This is a long one but I want to give as much information as possible I’m so confused as to what’s wrong with her. I’m an experienced axolotl owner and have never had anything like this happen before, and nor can I seem to find any threads about it.
So back in April my leucistic axolotl got into a little accident with her wildtype tankmate at dinner time where he bit her left front leg by mistake. It left a bit of a mark but I wasn’t too worried by it as over the years I’ve had similar opportunistic feeding injuries on my axies like the tail tip bitten off, so kept and eye on her healing and made sure my parameters were perfect etc.
Her leg healed over perfectly, until late May when she started exhibiting strange behaviour. She began swimming up top constantly, barely stopping and refusing to go down to the bottom. I monitored her behaviour and did the floating test by blowing on her slightly to see if she went down to the bottom - she did and managed to stay at the bottom just fine but chose to swim up top again a few seconds later and started her swimming routine again. Concerned, I began setting up a quarantine tank as I knew something was wrong. I’ve had her for over three years and she’s never done anything like that before. In the time it took for me to dig out an old spare tank I had she had developed what I can only describe as a de-gloving injury on the leg that had been bitten by her tank mate. This was a month after the incident and the leg had fully healed over, and I didn’t witness how this injury took place (so I don’t know if it was because of the swimming or if my wildtype bit her while she was swimming up top etc) but the skin had completely peeled off and had exposed the cartilage (?) underneath. It was horrific, I’ve never seen anything like it.
I immediately scooped her out into a quarantine tub and the next day I transferred her into a quarantine tank. This was four weeks ago and with daily water changes and regular feeding she seemed on the mend - the loose skin flaked off bit by bit and the leg has healed over yet again. But I’ve noticed she now has began to lean on the injured side, so much so that her right back leg sticks out the water. She’s not floating as I just have enough water in there to cover her back so she can’t float.
The day before yesterday I found her barrel rolling which she hasn’t done before so out of panic I’ve fridged her and she’s been in there for 48 hours now. She’s still leaning in the fridge.
Please help me, does anyone know what I can do to help her? She has no other signs of stress (I.e. gill deterioration, bent tail tip, forward gills etc) and is eating perfectly (and hasn’t lost her appetite once throughout this whole ordeal.)
This is a long one but I want to give as much information as possible I’m so confused as to what’s wrong with her. I’m an experienced axolotl owner and have never had anything like this happen before, and nor can I seem to find any threads about it.
So back in April my leucistic axolotl got into a little accident with her wildtype tankmate at dinner time where he bit her left front leg by mistake. It left a bit of a mark but I wasn’t too worried by it as over the years I’ve had similar opportunistic feeding injuries on my axies like the tail tip bitten off, so kept and eye on her healing and made sure my parameters were perfect etc.
Her leg healed over perfectly, until late May when she started exhibiting strange behaviour. She began swimming up top constantly, barely stopping and refusing to go down to the bottom. I monitored her behaviour and did the floating test by blowing on her slightly to see if she went down to the bottom - she did and managed to stay at the bottom just fine but chose to swim up top again a few seconds later and started her swimming routine again. Concerned, I began setting up a quarantine tank as I knew something was wrong. I’ve had her for over three years and she’s never done anything like that before. In the time it took for me to dig out an old spare tank I had she had developed what I can only describe as a de-gloving injury on the leg that had been bitten by her tank mate. This was a month after the incident and the leg had fully healed over, and I didn’t witness how this injury took place (so I don’t know if it was because of the swimming or if my wildtype bit her while she was swimming up top etc) but the skin had completely peeled off and had exposed the cartilage (?) underneath. It was horrific, I’ve never seen anything like it.
I immediately scooped her out into a quarantine tub and the next day I transferred her into a quarantine tank. This was four weeks ago and with daily water changes and regular feeding she seemed on the mend - the loose skin flaked off bit by bit and the leg has healed over yet again. But I’ve noticed she now has began to lean on the injured side, so much so that her right back leg sticks out the water. She’s not floating as I just have enough water in there to cover her back so she can’t float.
The day before yesterday I found her barrel rolling which she hasn’t done before so out of panic I’ve fridged her and she’s been in there for 48 hours now. She’s still leaning in the fridge.
Please help me, does anyone know what I can do to help her? She has no other signs of stress (I.e. gill deterioration, bent tail tip, forward gills etc) and is eating perfectly (and hasn’t lost her appetite once throughout this whole ordeal.)
