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Stipeygirl75 View Profile |
WTF is skinny! Help!
So Gimli has been an "only frog" for a few weeks now. But now I just noticed HE is starting to get skinny too :( Is it possible that he caught something from Lumpy? Or is there something in the tank they are not happy about? It is a 29 gal. tank, with large gravel in the bottom covered with "jungle bed" bedding. I have a basking lamp on one end where temp is around 85 degrees F, and the cool end with soaking dish is around 78 degrees F. Humidity is 60-70 depending on weather. I mist the tank once a day and wipe the sides free of any dirt everyday. I’ve been feeding Gimli store-bought crickets dusted with Reptocal and he seems to be eating them fine. Lumpy liked chasing moths and bugs from outside, but Gimli seems to prefer the store-bought ones. Which leads me to wonder if Lumpy was caught from the wild :( I’ve noticed Gimli doesn’t poop a lot either. And what does a normal WTF’s poop look like? He does go in his soaking dish and eat his crickets, but like I said his belly is starting to shrink and I’m not sure what to do. Do I need to change the bedding? It’s kind of like mulch and it said on the bag it was OK for WTFs, but what do I know! And I also had some of that dried green moss in there, and I removed it in case he was accidentally swallowing it. I’m not sure of his age - he is about 4" long. He’s been leaving little bits of shedded skin in his water dish also. Any ideas welcome! Thanks! |
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| 10/18/07 09:38am |
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Froggy&Gribbit View Profile |
Message To: Stipeygirl75 In reference to Message Id: 1482392 WTF is skinny! Help!
First I have not heard of that sort of bedding so I can’t confirm it’s safety........ Good thing you removed the moss as it can cause impaction. You need to make sure the plants are dye tested, by putting them in boiling water and seeing if any colour runs off. As their skin is very absorbant any toxins enter that way. Do you treat your water?? As there can be I think it is cloramide in some water that leaving out does not remove, you need to use the treatment. Distilled water is very bad for then also. So let us know what water you use and we can figure if it is possibly poisoning the frogs. Yes it is quite possible and happens regularly that one frog passes a disease to another frog. Right now the first thing I’d do was completely strip the tank, clean it with a water and bleach mix. Rinse it VERY VERY |
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| 10/18/07 11:22am |
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Froggy&Gribbit View Profile |
Message To: Stipeygirl75 In reference to Message Id: 1482392 WTF is skinny! Help!
Anyway rinse everything very well. Boil the rocks and plants etc. So just wash the tank itself with bleach/water mix. Or vinegar and water mix. Get new bedding. Now what is the frog’s stoll like. I know when the go in their water it is hard to tell. But it should be dark brown and like a sausage, cylinder or cone shape. There should be very little odour. If it is runny or smelly that is a sign the frog is sick. Smelly stool means the frog has parasites. Since he is eating well but loosing weight that would be my guess as to the problem. Fill us in on a bit more info and we’ll go from there. By the way 60-70% is too high for WTF they like lower humidity 50-60%.......... |
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| 10/18/07 11:31am |
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Stipeygirl75 View Profile |
Message To: Froggy&Gribbit In reference to Message Id: 1482456 WTF is skinny! Help!
I’ve been using well water (we have an underground well) treated with terrarium water conditioner. OK now the humidity . . . how do I get the humidity down to 50-60% when my house is normally 60-70%? My husband the smart aleck made that comment. I don’t know! I assume it will go down once it starts getting cold outside - we are in the autumn season right now and don’t have heat or air conditioning on in the house. Should I stop misting the tank? I bought some Nolvasan - would that help in cleaning? How do you treat parasites? - nervous frog mama |
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| 10/18/07 12:04pm |
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Stipeygirl75 View Profile |
Message To: Froggy&Gribbit In reference to Message Id: 1482456 WTF is skinny! Help!
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| 10/18/07 12:11pm |
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Whitie View Profile |
Message To: Stipeygirl75 In reference to Message Id: 1482473 WTF is skinny! Help!
Other than the humidity, I would think everything should have been ok. I only use vinegar/water to clean my tanks. Yes, you should stop misting the tank until it gets down to where it should be. My guess is the one that died, had something that he passed to this one. I would try and get a stool sample and have a vet run a ck on it. How many crickets do you feed at a time and how often? Can you show us a pic of your tank? If you can put the frog in a smaller tank and raise the temp to 82 to 85. Give it fresh clean water every day. Make sure he has a cool side to go to if he doesn’t want to be in the heat. Keep the humidity down as low as possible. Try just plain paper towel in the bottom of the tank, so you can see his pooh. |
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| 10/18/07 02:01pm |
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Stipeygirl75 View Profile |
Message To: Whitie In reference to Message Id: 1482589 WTF is skinny! Help!
It is basically the same as before, except I changed the substrate to the shredded coconut husk bedding. He seems to like this more - it’s softer. The large rock in front is his "hiding cave" but there is also a tall silk plant in the dark corner you can’t see, where he hides a lot also. You can just barely see the outline of his water bowl in that corner - behind that is a log and then the silk plant. I kept him in a smaller cage for awhile and he pooped immediately! :P So I saved that for the vet. His appt. isn’t until Monday. The poop was kind of rubbery-like. Is that normal? |
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| 10/19/07 09:42am |
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Stipeygirl75 View Profile |
Message To: Stipeygirl75 In reference to Message Id: 1483405 WTF is skinny! Help!
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| 10/19/07 09:52am |
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Froggy&Gribbit View Profile |
Message To: Stipeygirl75 In reference to Message Id: 1483413 WTF is skinny! Help!
I can’t see anything in the tank that could be a problem......... What is the branch? Is it real or fake? IF freal what kind of wood. Evergreens like pine, fir etc are toxic. Willow and manzanita are examples of ok wood. Like White said I would increase the temperatures. Try and get his temp to 85 day and 80 at night. They use heat to naturally heal. Get your humidity lower. To do that you need to stop misting. I know you said you have pretty high humidity at your house but the lights over the tank should cause more moisture to respirate out of his environment. So less misting should do the trick if not increasing the area on top of his tank that the moisture can respirate out of will help. (move your light back so more screen is open to the air) You can increas the wattage of the light (so long as you don’t go above 40watt for incandescent) increase. And finally if it is still too high you cna change to paper towel substrate. The coconut bedding etc can hold moisture. These are just some ideas. But my guess is if you stop misting it will get where you need it to be. I don’t remember if you gauges in his tank or not (temp and humidity) if not they are crucial to have. Ideally while sick you want his humidity even lower than optimum, at like 40% as bacteria thrives in moisture. As for rubbery if you mean pretty solid and holds together pretty well, yes that is how it should be. You did not mention smell to the waste (which would knock your socks off if it were parasites) that probably means he does not have parasites and it could be a bacterial infection. Try to reduce his stress. Handle him as little as possible. Not too much loud noise around him. You also might want to cover the sides of his tank with garbage bags or craft paper to help reduce his stress. I would have gone with a hospital tank setup with paper towel substrate with nothing in it but a hide. water dish and his favourite plant to hide behind but since you just redid everything I wouldn’t stress him any more. You are taking him to the vet which is great. Just make sure it is a herp vet experienced with treating amphibians or you will be wasting your time and money. There is a remedy called mela fix. It is all natural, made from teatree that is a natural antibacterial. You can by it in the fish department of walmart and alot of petshops. I suggest you get some. It is good to have on hand and would not hurt to start a treatment for gimli either. It can treat some parasites and can help with impaction as it is oil based but it is very good for bacterial infections. Hoppy, here on repticzone has created a post on how to dose and treat frogs with it. |
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| 10/19/07 11:35am |
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Stipeygirl75 View Profile |
Message To: Froggy&Gribbit In reference to Message Id: 1483482 WTF is skinny! Help!
The branch is kind of like styrofoam, and molded to look like real wood. It is pretty cool because you can bend it into different shapes. No, there was no smell at all to his waste. So that’s good. I was going to leave him in a little hospital tank, but the paper towel I put on the bottom somehow had curled over into his water dish, thereby soaking up half the water out of the dish and depositing it onto the bottom of the tank. I found him sitting in water! So yeah, I decided it would be less stress to just put him back into the main tank than to clean the mess out of the hospital tank and move him 2 more times :S He seemed a little confused at first, but seems to be back to his normal routine. As to the vet, I have no idea how much experience they have. I live in a small town so my choices are limited. This one says they specialize in "small animal pets and exotics". At the least, the vet will get to know us in case we have any other problems in the future. I will check into the Mela fix, thanks! |
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| 10/19/07 11:56am |
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Froggy&Gribbit View Profile |
Message To: Stipeygirl75 In reference to Message Id: 1483502 WTF is skinny! Help!
If the vet is not available I’d go with a treatment of mela fix and see how he does |
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| 10/19/07 05:30pm |
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Stipeygirl75 View Profile |
Message To: Froggy&Gribbit In reference to Message Id: 1483699 WTF is skinny! Help!
The vet said something funny. He said Gimli may "eat like a teenager." Some days he might eat a lot, and other days not at all. I found that humorous  |
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| 10/22/07 01:17pm |
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Froggy&Gribbit View Profile |
Message To: Stipeygirl75 In reference to Message Id: 1486427 WTF is skinny! Help!
One of our frogs is the same some times he eats others he’ll ignore the food. One is even particular with the colour of the cricket. He will only eat the brown ones not the dark brown/black one!!!! Little bugger!!! |
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| 10/22/07 03:01pm |
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