Special care for missing leg?

[emily74]

Hi all! So I know getting limbs bitten off can happen when keeping multiples together at a young age so I check my axies every day to see that they all have their limbs. I have 7 that are 4 months old, split up into 3 enclosures. The 2 that I am keeping were the ones that I had to free from the egg, and they are considerably smaller than the ones that hatched on their own. Those two are together. Well the leucistic one got its leg bitten off by the smaller wildtype. While it is healing, should I seperate them? Is there anything special I should do with the water to help keep the axie in good condition? I just want to make sure it has the best oppertunity to heal. I was really shocked because I expected the wildtype to get picked on first - it is much smaller. From what I can tell, it looks just below the shoulder where it was bit off, so there is just a little nub left. Should I expect that a normal arm will grow back and does it take long? Thanks everyone!

 

[kaliko22]

When I bought mine, he was about 4 inches long with a freshly bitten off arm (April of this year). Sounds like about where yours is. You can check my pix if you like. I keep mine still with no filter and his arm has grown back perfectly, and he is almost 8 inches long, lush gills (after losing them when I added a filter) and chubby. since I kept mine with no filter, I just did the normal 20%-50% water changes, removed waste and old food. Would even do complete water changes and tank cleaning. It grew back just fine. I just took care of him as I normally would. There of course is a risk of infection, so watch for white cotton like stuff around the wound. I think mine lost the redness at the end, and healed over within a few days. Every week I noticed it got a bit longer. Then toes started to sprout. ) took a couple months to fully come back. I have never kept mine with others, so cannot answer that. But if I were in that situation I would be paranoid that it will happen again. I read that they are cannibalistic til around 6-7 inches. But have heard of this also happening with full grown adults. Have also heard of missing parts growing back slightly deformed. Extra, or not enough toes, backwards, or just plain different lol. Was not the case for me, his is perfectly fine, but even if it came back deformed, he would still be fine.

 

[emily74]

ok thank you so much!!