Illness/Sickness: White Spot, Red Leg, 'Fin' Rot, Bloat - or?

sugarkandii

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I've been browsing through the forum tonight to see if I could get a definitive answer on what to do about a problem that has quickly overtaken my 80 gallon community 'lotl tank. All of my 5 axolotls have come down with what appears to be 'foot rot', or bulgy/bumpy/falling-off toes and limbs- to boot, there is severe localized swelling in the 'joints' of the legs, causing blistering and rupturing with additional fungus(MJ)[1] (all pictures will be included below for reference). I am also, in reality, looking for an actual ID or diagnostic so I can choose an appropriate treatment method (salt baths have already commenced, however from the previous week when only my two melanoids were affected the salt baths helped temporarily, but the spots have returned with a vengance)

To clarify, these spots are not natural markings, or flat heat-stress induced marks- they are conical, raised, and white/fluffy-ish spots, that have literally over taken one of my axolotls, Cherry[2]. And as Murphy's Law Dictates, I am also having terrible suspicions of my golden, Ponyo, bloating[3]- although she may be gearing up for a baby making season, I'm honestly completely unsure! My Leucistic, Gregory[4], has also shown some strange yellow-ish balls on his gills with very evident receding[4]. My Wildtype[1] and my smallest Melanoid Cherry[2] haven't grown nearly as fast as their counter-parts (Grizzy[5] being from the same clutch as the two is nearly 7"), and I fear this is in part because of lethargy, and refusing food that I largely attributed to the redworms my LFS sells to me. I didn't notice the 'bumps' in this severe of a state until last week, when my boyfriend pointed out that both Grizzy and Cherry were bumpy- although I thought they might be part of their natural markings or different levels of slime coat, I quickly have come to the conclusion that this is not only a problem for one of my lotls, but all 5.

I moved recently and brought the babes with me- taking water from their old tank to boost the cycle. I do weekly water changes of 20 gallons with dechlorinated (aloe vera) water. I've set up two other tanks as well with our taps without an issue (I keep an array of scaleless fish which are often viewed as more sensitive to water qualities/chemicals/etc.) I have had issues with water hardness in the past, so I keep crushed shells in my HOB filter to keep it fairly steady at 300-350GH.

I've misplaced my master kit, but will get some water perimeters tomorrow when I am up. I was just wondering if anyone could recommend salt baths vs. methylne blue vs. bringing the gang to the vet or even a more specific idea of what is going on here and how I can best address the illness/parasite/disease/what-have-you. The forward-facing gills are truly on account of me needing to make another baffle for this tank (previous one got lost in the move), although are an obvious indicator of stress and could very well have been a 'weakening point' to allow this kind of infection/bacteria/fungus to occur.

*I know these containers are on the small side for all of them- I got in from work at 11PM tonight when I noticed the severity of the problem today, and will be getting some proper sized bins in the morning*

-1- MJ
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-2- Cherry
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-3- Ponyo
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-4- Gregory
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-5- Grizzy
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I also have an axie with the bumps like your second pic. I've been bathing him in a salt bath and scrubbing his tank out with really hot water. Then I replace with all fresh dechlorinated water, he starts looking good, then the bumps come back.
 
How long has this been an issue for you, Kim? I'm honestly going to 'nuke' the tank- I lost my wild-type, MJ, over-night last night and I am absolutely determined to get this fixed. I've been reading up as well regarding build-up in soil causing foot-rot, so I'll more than likely opt for a bare-bottom tank and pull everything out.

For anyone with any sense of how to kick the *** of ich/a serious parasite/nasty bacteria colony, would running the tank with methylene blue (with the lotls in the fridge doing 2-3x salt baths for at least two weeks) and cranking the heat up to 92-96 be of any use? I don't expect to have a ready-to-go tank afterwards- I just want to deal with this once and have it actually go away. I've read through tons of unanswered, similar threads here regarding lumpy toes/foot rot - so any direction would be seriously appreciated.
 
For about a couple months. Similar threads seem to point towards it being a skin reaction due to poor cleaning or possibly an allergic reaction to the stuff that helps the slime coating in the dechlorinator. I feed my guys on an every other day schedule so it's possibly the water conditions deteriorated enough to impact them :( Good luck with your guys!
 
For about a couple months. Similar threads seem to point towards it being a skin reaction due to poor cleaning or possibly an allergic reaction to the stuff that helps the slime coating in the dechlorinator. I feed my guys on an every other day schedule so it's possibly the water conditions deteriorated enough to impact them :( Good luck with your guys!

That's what i've noticed- I've had issues with cycle-drops in earlier years, and although my nitrates are a bit high tonight (<40ish), I can't say that anything else is crazy out of the ordinary. PH, KH, and GH swings can really mess things up, but that even again is something I rectified and has long since been stabilized. I'm going to test the water out of the tap here to see if there's anything weird showing up- maybe I'll grab another dechlorinator while I'm out tomorrow as well, although the dechlorinated water in the bins they're in today haven't increased the bump count..

I feed my guys every other day too, although it's been a struggle getting them all to eat on the same days haha- thank you so much, and I hope everything works out for you as well! If I find anything in the forums here that's got serious solid feedback I'll forward it along to you :)
 
I think I may have discovered a couple of problems in my big tank clean out today -
I started by pulling all the decorations out, included were two 'aquarium' safe pieces from my LFS, and a bunch of plastic plants that both float and sit sunk in the bottom. I vacuumed the /snot/ out of the sand, pulling at least a 1/3 of it out, as well as doing a 50% water change and putting new filter floss in my filter (the sponge and carbon from before are still there until I know for sure if there's a reason for me to nuke the whole thing with methylene blue). I put the decorations in a bucket that I then put /very/ hot water in to see if I could get the dirt off of the top-most floating plants, as well as the two ceramic(i believe) ornaments in the bucket as well. When I took the two pieces out and scrubbed, I pulled up what looks to be paint (turns my hand black to hold it), not sure if either of these has been leaching anything, but only my lotls who like to hang out in the hanging log had severely damaged feet (my leucistic, Gregory, has fine feet and just had a weird spot in his gills, and Ponyo is literally fine other than being a bit chubby, and I'll be cutting her feeding down to twice a week instead of 5 days to rectify).

The other issue I came up with, is in my gravel cleaning and wall scrubbing I've discovered remnants of what could be dead blood worms, or pieces of root from a pothos I grew in my filter to help filter nitrates in their old tank (I used the filter pad from the old tank to jump-start the cycle on their current home, and bits root are actually still growing on the pad that I just threw out) - I'm having a painful amount of trouble scooping out all of the little bits of things, but is it also possible that these could be earthworm babies from my feedings with them? I wash them off as thoroughly as possible before hand-feeding them, but they aren't fuzzy nor are they quite as long as the root pieces in the filter are. There were also bits and pieces of these things in the floating plants that they love to climb up into- not sure if there's any point to me putting these back in after a serious scrub, I don't want to cause any more issues.

Finally, I've also been wondering with the turning of the seasons here in Ontario if their temperature has been a bit unstable- normally in the summer with the a/c on the tank sits at 55-60, but here today I'm just noticing it's up a bit from yesterday - I'm going to grab a chiller online - they don't need any more stress than they've already been under!

Any tips, ideas, or comments would be appreciated. They are all doing well in the fridge, haven't noticed any anchorworm esque things or any little worm/root bits in the containers so I hope that means they haven't eaten anything like that (as they have all pooed)
 
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