What Should I Do?

[vanessa]

my new axie that i mentioned was swimming around alot is getting worse. he wont eat i gave him a salt bath and put him in the fridge and that didnt seem to help. he now floats with his back out of the water and sticks his head out. tonight he just went crazy for no reason, like he was having a fit. the water is fine amonia=0, nitrite=0 and nitrate is low. i dont understand what is wrong and i hate watching him suffer in pain. i wonder if it would be kinder to put him out of his misery, but i dont want him to die. all my other axies are doing fine, please help.

 

[claire]

it is normal for an axie to float. mine float with their 'fin' just out of the water. is this the case with your axie? when he is sticking his head out of the water is he taking gulps of air? if so then he may just be dong this because of lack of oxygen in the water.my axies tend to go crazy sometimes. by crazy do you mean frantically swim around the tank and occasionally bumping into the tank?

 

[grant]

My axie swims around a lot too. I've seen him crawl up on top of some rocks and then jump off and jolt across the tank and into the side (but not to hard). I think he just does this because he wants to move around and swim. How old is the axie? Younger axie (from what I hear) tend to be a lot more lively than older axolotls.

 

[anne-marie]

Vanessa, when he floats can he get back down to ground again and stay there? If not, put him in shallow water, even in an icecream tub or something, he may have a gas bubble to work out of his system. In terms of not eating, try prawns! I fed them the other day and every one of my axies loved them.
Is he kept in the smaller tank you have or the larger main tank? I'm trying to remember if this is one of my axies or a separate one you bought - I think it was a separate one?? How big is it?

 

[natalie]

Ooooh prawns! Nice idea! Then at least I can sit and have a meal with my little man knowing we are both enjoying it! hahaha!

 

[vanessa]

Claire- trust me the way he is floating isnt normal he floats at the top on his side, i know it isnt normal cause one of my other axies likes to float in the water but not like he does. he is really skinny and his back is starting to hunch. when he sticks his head out of the water he doesnt gulp the air he just leaves it there for a while and sometimes he gets on top of the filter and seems like he is going to climb out of the tank.

Grant-he is around 7-8 inches and the swimming is more like thrashing, thats why i thought the water could have been of poor quality and irritating his skin, but it is perfect.

Anne-Marie- the axolotl i am talking about is a separate one i bought, the one you gave me is fine, as soon as i took him out of the fridge he was perfectly normal again. both he and the golden one you gave me are both in the large tank i have, with my white axie,they all get along fine and are complete pigglets. the other one that is sick is by himself in the small tank. i am just so happy i didnt let him near my other three axies. in regards to prawns i have tried everything he looks interested in the food and follows it around the tank kind of mezmorised but just doesnt bite.
by the way Annie-Marie, in the axie gallery under the thread Tezcatlipoca-Halszka's axie, that golden albino halszka has called mokey, is that one of your axie babies cause if it is, it looks exactly like my one that you gave me, even their gill shape looks the same, they look like twins.lol.

 

[anne-marie]

yes it is. Both of them are actually.

(Message edited by waltona on June 09, 2005)

 

[vanessa]

cool. you must have done really well raising your baby axies cause all the ones ive seen have looked really happy and healthy. also you had alot of colour variety in your spawn. if one of the ones you gave me breeds with my white axie in the future i hope i do as well as you did raising the babies!

 

[anne-marie]

Thanks Vanessa.

"in regards to prawns i have tried everything he looks interested in the food and follows it around the tank kind of mezmorised but just doesnt bite."
Did he eat when you first got him or has he stopped. And, where did you get him from.

If he hasn't eaten since you got him, and he was in a tank with gravel, he may gravel in his system. I would leave him in shallow water.

(Message edited by waltona on June 09, 2005)

 

[vanessa]

he ate for the first couple of days, but not very enthusiaticly, then went off his food completely. i got him from tropigold aquariums in rockingham, they ussually have okay axies but i didnt think he was that skinny until i got him home and looked at him from a birds eye view. i usually get my axies from Vebas aquariums as we know the people who own the store and they have pretty good axies most of the time. i got my white axie from there and she is such a little fatty.lol.

 

[anne-marie]

I go to Veba's all the time - it's such a cool shop! I dont think there's much more you can do - keep him in shallow water, offer food, keep things clean. Hope for the best.

 

[vanessa]

Vebas is cool- their prices are so cheap compared to the fish shop near me they also have a huge variety of fish, i wish we lived close to it cause my mum doesnt like to drive all that way very often. we might be going there this weekend though cause i am fixing up my schools fish tank that has two miserable looking comets in it . i going to keep the comets, restart the tank and hopefully get some oscars! i would have chosen to put axies in it, but the school thinks they are too hard to look after over the school holidays. but oh well oscars are good to and they have such cool personalities!