The shock symptom sounds alot like toxing out. Just saying.
Sublime, I will dig up the lab paperwork we have on the analysis of the soils in the nightcrawler containers. Our Walmart does NOT use the same supplier that Petsmart or Petco use in our city. We usually get ours from the local Academy Sports store ..... they use a different supplier and we have never lost any frogs due to those worms.
We breed the frogs and lost quite a few when we used Walmart worms at one point. We first thought it might be the water so we had it tested and it was fine. Then we had the coco fiber & the paper towels we use tested as well....no problems. The Worms from Walmart came back with results that were proving to be toxic to the frogs. It may have been an isolated incident, but I'm not willing to use our animals as a test for it. I just thought I'd share the information so that others could avoid the heartache themselves.........but again, I only have results for the ONE store here in Corpus that we had issues with, and it could be isolated.
I will advise that you open the containers and take a good whiff......if it smells bad, even a little bit, AVOID it. When the worms start to die & decompose, they ARE lethal to anything you feed them to.
Wow that's horrible, sorry about that. I'm kind of nervous now, haha. When your friend tested all the materials that was in relation with what you were putting in the frogs terrarium, how did he or she test it. What was the brand name of the worms your Walmart is supplying? How did you know the Sports Academy worms were safe, did you get those tested too or just checked the labeling and smelled it?
I use the same worms at you do mark. That company is in corona and i havent had any issues.
@Ivory do you think it might be leaning more on the side of an isolated incident if I've been feeding him these night crawlers for over a month without signs of toxcity or puking. Or would it take awhile to process? I want to take your advice, but I just want to get your opinion on this.
I am thinking it was in isolated incident. My friend is actually my cousin and he works with the biology labs at A&M and he & his cronies did all the testing. I honestly do not speak the language of chemicals, but he broke it down for me. We always have opened the containers and looked & smelled the worms......it just made sense to do so. I may be weird, but I smell my foods before buying fruits & veggies, so it made sense to do it for my animal's foods when i can too.
The tested samples were taken from night crawlers from all 4 local sources (Walmart, Petco, Petsamrt & Academy) and the only one that came back as toxic were the ones from Walmart. All 4 store have different suppliers. The worms eat the soil and therefore are literally what they eat. They also did an analysis & necropsy on 3 of the frogs we gave them that had died. They tested some crickets & dubia roaches we were feeding at the time as well. It all came down to the Walmart worms......so as a precaution, we simply do not buy them there. They tested our substrates and hides and the water also.
The frogs started dying about 1 month into having been fed the Walmart worms.....we lost just under 30 frogs. The worms our Walmart had came from a supplier in KY.
I need to take pre-caution now when I buy my next night crawlers. I'm not even sure if my Petco or Petsmart sells night crawlers? I know my local reptile shop does, but they charge a lot more than Walmart... I might just end up having to pay more to play it safe from now on. That's a big hit for your guys business, I can see why you don't want to test again to make sure it was just an isolated incident. You guys are lucky though that you had a related person that could do analysis to narrow down the cause; I imagine that can be very costly for someone who just wants to get some typical materials evaluated with the addition of amphibians.
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