@Terrarium Supplies: Thanks, and thank you for pointing out that you do raise juveniles individually, which is somethign I think is essential for establishing any juveile frog or reptile for the reasons you cite. Yours look terrific and are obviously very healthy!
And I did not think to have a biopsy or necropsy done, in hindsight I should have. I agree with you completely, and that was my intent in trying to preface my thread with the fact that I am not a hepitologist or a vet. I also hope it is very clear I wouldn't want to discourage someone from keeping waxy. They are awesome frogs! My vet is a personal friend of one of the indiviudals who helped pioneer getting the chacoan waxy into the trade. Since I opened up a topic that yeah is pretty gray, I'll see if my vet can get anythign from him that might have some quantitative data to backup or refute what I'm saying.
I'll give a little more detail as to how my vet ruled things out. The first thing we checked for was an impaction, he did not have one. After he aclimated there was a period of time, like I mentioned, he seemed off. My vet and I discussed his behaviors and came to the conclusion that he needed some aspects of his enclosure reworked to include more hides. Things got back to normal for a while. Then there was a period of time he started to turn a little darker green and had urites were of a quality indicating he needed electrolytes. So, after an electrolyte soak things were looking up again. Then over time he started loosing enthusiasm for food and began behaving like Lynn is saying--he seemed stressed. I continued wiht a few more electolyte soaks, and made sure he was eating, but the quantity of food he was taking in dropped off. He was checked for MBD didn't have it, and parasites which he also did not have. He then got to the point he lost his bright green color altogether. I did not have him physically examined at this point for an infection due to not wanting to create further stress; however in light of his lacking a few other symptons the conclusion was that it was very unlikely there was anythign viral or microbial going on. It was a couple days after this he really went down hill and stopped eating altogether. I tried a few different things to try and entice his appetite, but it was just like he didn't care. He never turned brown, only dark green, which from what I have read and been told by experts was a sign of stress whereas turnign brown is a sign of infection. Not long before he died he even had an incomplete shed--not because of the humidity conditions etc., it was more like he just didn't clean himself off. I tried force-feeding, (which he then spit out or up every time) and then died the next day. In the whole time I owned him I only handled my frog twice and did so in the proper manner.
But again, I realize this is all just observational data, in terms of the final cause of death I don't have medical data to provide. And again, my intent isn't to discourage anyone from getting a waxy. But as Lynn said, the idea of isolation in species which are social causing stress to the point of death isn't a well documented idea, so some of my intent was just to say, "Hey this has been my experience, maybe it's something to think about and for others to voice in on if they've had similar experiences," with the hope that if this is a real consideration to take with some speices, maybe this topic could spark finding that out or moving toward that answer. And yeah if somone has a different theory as to why mine didn't make it I want that answer, but the experts who were involved in helping me try to save him indicated that they don't understand what happened. But anyways... I know you're not saying the social group theory isn't what happened, but yeah it's not definitive. And I myself am very scientifically inclined, so I agree that this is a gray area until you get conclusive data and not just observations or enough observations to amount to conclusive data. If a mod ultimately feels that this thread is something that doesn't best serve as useful information, I won't be offended if it's taken down.
Lynn: Thanks, =( it's discouraging to be left where I don't know for sure what happened, but in the end I'm glad he didn't linger a long time and know I did everything I could have/hope that my experience will be useful information for someone else in some way or other. I'm glad to hear yours made it through! I'll defintily be getting some waxys again, it will probably be a little while, but this experience defintily did not put me off to keepign them.