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mighty fungus-kicking powers
Jan. 28th, 2014 10:03 pmThis is a post about the wee axolotl Hachiko! She remains wee because of not having eaten at all for months. Her triumphant return to the up-above room-temperature world was accomplished a couple of days ago, after literally months of spending time in the axolotl equivalent of the hospital: the refrigerator.
Axies sometimes get fungal growths. Usually it's because of injuries or poor water quality: like most amphibians, they have a nice slime layer that keeps bad stuff off them for the most part, and it's when that's broken or degraded that they can get in trouble. The fungus is something that's in the environment all the time, and they usually aren't bothered. So, shortly after last fall's warm weather, which isn't really good for them, Hachi had gotten a little fungus in her gills that would go away and come back, and she wasn't growing well or seeming very energetic. The first method for fixing that problem is to give salt baths. It proved very tough to catch her from her tank for doing that, and the treatment wasn't very successful, so I went to the worrisome fridging option within a couple of weeks.
I kept giving salt baths for a couple of months while she was in there, but the fungus would go away and come back just like it had before, even when I eventually raised the concentration enough that I was worried about harming Hachi with it. (Amphibians don't like salt either, but it's like chemotherapy: the idea is that the disease likes it a lot less.) So I decided to quit with the salt and just keep her in the fridge... and she got better. It was very weird to keep changing her water every day and have her fairly active but refusing to eat. Truly, other forms of life are fascinating. Anyway, she hasn't had a recurrence in weeks, so I am cautiously moving her back to room temp.
Now Hachiko is back in her 10-gallon tank and eating food pellets whenever they're offered. Hopefully we can get her fed up big enough to go into the larger tank with Hex someday -- I look forward to the cuteness multiplier, but she's still so little that an accidental bite could do her real damage, so she needs to bulk up first!
In other axolotl news: there's new evidence for the hypothesis that they're extinct in the wild, alas. At least it reminded me to make this:
(I can't remember the other Hipster Axolotl joke we were making like nine months ago when I took the photo, though. Wim?)
Axies sometimes get fungal growths. Usually it's because of injuries or poor water quality: like most amphibians, they have a nice slime layer that keeps bad stuff off them for the most part, and it's when that's broken or degraded that they can get in trouble. The fungus is something that's in the environment all the time, and they usually aren't bothered. So, shortly after last fall's warm weather, which isn't really good for them, Hachi had gotten a little fungus in her gills that would go away and come back, and she wasn't growing well or seeming very energetic. The first method for fixing that problem is to give salt baths. It proved very tough to catch her from her tank for doing that, and the treatment wasn't very successful, so I went to the worrisome fridging option within a couple of weeks.
I kept giving salt baths for a couple of months while she was in there, but the fungus would go away and come back just like it had before, even when I eventually raised the concentration enough that I was worried about harming Hachi with it. (Amphibians don't like salt either, but it's like chemotherapy: the idea is that the disease likes it a lot less.) So I decided to quit with the salt and just keep her in the fridge... and she got better. It was very weird to keep changing her water every day and have her fairly active but refusing to eat. Truly, other forms of life are fascinating. Anyway, she hasn't had a recurrence in weeks, so I am cautiously moving her back to room temp.
Now Hachiko is back in her 10-gallon tank and eating food pellets whenever they're offered. Hopefully we can get her fed up big enough to go into the larger tank with Hex someday -- I look forward to the cuteness multiplier, but she's still so little that an accidental bite could do her real damage, so she needs to bulk up first!
In other axolotl news: there's new evidence for the hypothesis that they're extinct in the wild, alas. At least it reminded me to make this:
(I can't remember the other Hipster Axolotl joke we were making like nine months ago when I took the photo, though. Wim?)
