losfrijoles
New member
A month ago our Axolotl got fungus in her gills. We gave her a salt bath (15 mins, 1tbsp for 3L water) and put black tea (20 gal tank, 7 tea bags) in her tank, per some advice we found on the internet.
At first, her gills cleared up pretty quick, but every time we would try to feed an earthworm her she wouldn't seem to notice us dangling it in front of her face. We attributed this to the tank water being basically opaque or smelling so strongly of tea she couldn't smell the worms and started changing the water every 3 days to dilute the tea down and get rid of it. The tank water has now been almost normal color for two weeks, yet this behavior persists.
We've had her for over a year and a half now and in the past she would always voraciously gobble up earthworms without a problem. In fact, she would come up to the glass and start pointing her head towards the surface of the tank every time she would see the bright orange worm container (we just used bait worms from walmart usually). She would swim up and grab the worm after we got her attention and dropped it down. Now, she doesn't react at all to the worms and if we wiggle them in front of her face and they happen to touch her lips, she just does a fast "head shake" and turns away. One time she did bite the worm, but it seemed to be accidental and she immediately spat it back out. I would get a video, but we just tried again and I don't want to bother her too hard.
We were worried she isn't eating, so for the last two weeks we've occasionally put a bunch of pellets (honestly not sure what kind, they're brown and hard and smell of fish) in her "food bowl" and leave her to find them. Each time we've done this we see her "snuffling" around in the food bowl, so we think she's eating? She hasn't pooped in at least two weeks. She was pooping all the time when we first filled the tank with the tea water (so often it actually caused a problem, since we couldn't tell when she pooped and would end up leaving it in there for a couple days until we changed the water as scheduled).
Our latest tank water test (~5 days ago) shows us as sightly basic, some nitrate, no nitrites, no ammonia, and pretty hard water. We use a chiller to keep our water between 16C and 18C (it slowly rises until the cooler turns on every 2 hours or so for 15-20 minutes to bring it back down to 16C). We switched last week from API StressCoat to Seachem Prime, hoping to allow her to grow a natural slime coat (we read the aloe vera will replace her natural coat and might not be so effective) and stop spiking our ammonia whenever there was a water change (due to the way StressCoat works chemically).
Is this sudden refusal of a favorite food a normal thing? How can we help her eat worms again?
At first, her gills cleared up pretty quick, but every time we would try to feed an earthworm her she wouldn't seem to notice us dangling it in front of her face. We attributed this to the tank water being basically opaque or smelling so strongly of tea she couldn't smell the worms and started changing the water every 3 days to dilute the tea down and get rid of it. The tank water has now been almost normal color for two weeks, yet this behavior persists.
We've had her for over a year and a half now and in the past she would always voraciously gobble up earthworms without a problem. In fact, she would come up to the glass and start pointing her head towards the surface of the tank every time she would see the bright orange worm container (we just used bait worms from walmart usually). She would swim up and grab the worm after we got her attention and dropped it down. Now, she doesn't react at all to the worms and if we wiggle them in front of her face and they happen to touch her lips, she just does a fast "head shake" and turns away. One time she did bite the worm, but it seemed to be accidental and she immediately spat it back out. I would get a video, but we just tried again and I don't want to bother her too hard.
We were worried she isn't eating, so for the last two weeks we've occasionally put a bunch of pellets (honestly not sure what kind, they're brown and hard and smell of fish) in her "food bowl" and leave her to find them. Each time we've done this we see her "snuffling" around in the food bowl, so we think she's eating? She hasn't pooped in at least two weeks. She was pooping all the time when we first filled the tank with the tea water (so often it actually caused a problem, since we couldn't tell when she pooped and would end up leaving it in there for a couple days until we changed the water as scheduled).
Our latest tank water test (~5 days ago) shows us as sightly basic, some nitrate, no nitrites, no ammonia, and pretty hard water. We use a chiller to keep our water between 16C and 18C (it slowly rises until the cooler turns on every 2 hours or so for 15-20 minutes to bring it back down to 16C). We switched last week from API StressCoat to Seachem Prime, hoping to allow her to grow a natural slime coat (we read the aloe vera will replace her natural coat and might not be so effective) and stop spiking our ammonia whenever there was a water change (due to the way StressCoat works chemically).
Is this sudden refusal of a favorite food a normal thing? How can we help her eat worms again?