Why did my little Alfred die? (ACF)

[Verdure]

Hi there,
My beloved Alfred died today. She was an African Clawed Frog and only 8-9 months of age. My husband and I named her Alfred before we even knew the sex, but decided to stick with the name anyway.

Here's how it started. 3 days ago Alfred started having this strange spasm. I thought I spooked her while walking past and this brought on some sort of shock. Next 2 days it happened again for no reason when I was trying to feed her. First she would tense up all over, tremble and then contort, sort of bowing the head down and sideways. I was so scared because I thought she was in extreme pain. This would last for about 10 seconds. She would then just go limp in my hand and just breathe for about a minute, then swim away. I read on a site it may have been a stroke, but I don't know. There didn't seem to be any signs of red leg or bloating.

After the first spasm she sort of lost control over her right leg. Yesterday after the last spasm she lost control of her feet (but not thighs) and had a lot of trouble surfacing for air. I reduced the amount of water in the tank so she wouldn't stress out. Her appetite was gradually decreasing, on the day of the first spasm she was hungry, tried to get food but had the spasm and didn't eat after that. Next day she ate 1 shrimp, yesterday she ate 2 but I have a feeling those were regurgitated later. Yesterday I also saw her trying to eat her own shedded skin. It seems to me also that lately she was shedding more than usual.

After the spasm yesterday I was resolved to take her to a vet this morning, I had an appointment ready at 10 40 am but when I woke up she was at the bottom of her tank, belly up. I picked her up and brought her to the surface but she wasn't breathing anymore.

This was a very sad loss for me, I grew very attached to her, and she was so young and I can't help but feel I failed her.

Here's some info about the tank setup. The tank itself is about 60 litres in size, temperature was set to about 21-22 Celsius, I did a 40% water change twice a week with a gravel pump. She had about 5 elodea densa plants, one anubias and one moss ball. I also had water wisteria, but it didn't live very long after purchase. I bought those plants about 2 months ago and noticed some snails in the tank. I wonder if the plants or the snails carried some sort of infection with them to my little Alfred. I fed her freeze-dried river shrimp, gammarus, tubifex, sometimes bloodworms for about 10-15 minutes each day.

This is all very baffling as I am the type of person who takes pet care seriously. Before purchasing Alfred I made sure to read any info I could find on ACFs and aquatic frogs. I knew what I was getting into and was meticulous about water changes, keeping my hands clean and making sure not to contaminate any of Alfred's things with soaps etc.

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
(may all your froggies live long and happy lives)

[mpmistr]

Hi there,
My beloved Alfred died today. She was an African Clawed Frog and only 8-9 months of age. My husband and I named her Alfred before we even knew the sex, but decided to stick with the name anyway.

Here's how it started. 3 days ago Alfred started having this strange spasm. I thought I spooked her while walking past and this brought on some sort of shock. Next 2 days it happened again for no reason when I was trying to feed her. First she would tense up all over, tremble and then contort, sort of bowing the head down and sideways. I was so scared because I thought she was in extreme pain. This would last for about 10 seconds. She would then just go limp in my hand and just breathe for about a minute, then swim away. I read on a site it may have been a stroke, but I don't know. There didn't seem to be any signs of red leg or bloating.

After the first spasm she sort of lost control over her right leg. Yesterday after the last spasm she lost control of her feet (but not thighs) and had a lot of trouble surfacing for air. I reduced the amount of water in the tank so she wouldn't stress out. Her appetite was gradually decreasing, on the day of the first spasm she was hungry, tried to get food but had the spasm and didn't eat after that. Next day she ate 1 shrimp, yesterday she ate 2 but I have a feeling those were regurgitated later. Yesterday I also saw her trying to eat her own shedded skin. It seems to me also that lately she was shedding more than usual.

After the spasm yesterday I was resolved to take her to a vet this morning, I had an appointment ready at 10 40 am but when I woke up she was at the bottom of her tank, belly up. I picked her up and brought her to the surface but she wasn't breathing anymore.

This was a very sad loss for me, I grew very attached to her, and she was so young and I can't help but feel I failed her.

Here's some info about the tank setup. The tank itself is about 60 litres in size, temperature was set to about 21-22 Celsius, I did a 40% water change twice a week with a gravel pump. She had about 5 elodea densa plants, one anubias and one moss ball. I also had water wisteria, but it didn't live very long after purchase. I bought those plants about 2 months ago and noticed some snails in the tank. I wonder if the plants or the snails carried some sort of infection with them to my little Alfred. I fed her freeze-dried river shrimp, gammarus, tubifex, sometimes bloodworms for about 10-15 minutes each day.

This is all very baffling as I am the type of person who takes pet care seriously. Before purchasing Alfred I made sure to read any info I could find on ACFs and aquatic frogs. I knew what I was getting into and was meticulous about water changes, keeping my hands clean and making sure not to contaminate any of Alfred's things with soaps etc.

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
(may all your froggies live long and happy lives)

Hey there.
Is 60 litres roughly 15 US Gallons? That size should be okay for a single frog, though really it's the bare minimum.

Temperatures sound good, snails shouldn't of been a huge problem.. plants are fine.. I am assuming you used dechlorinator to treat your tap water otherwise 40% water changes are fine, but twice a week seems a bit excessive.

My only guesses would be a poor diet or intestinal blockage.

What did you use for substrate? Gravel could be ingested and cause a blockage.

Freeze dried foods are not good for these frogs long term, they can also cause intestinal issues. A combination of wet/frozen, live, and pelleted foods seem to work best.

Hope that helps, sorry for your loss.

[Verdure]

60 litres is about 13 gallons. I started out with that and was going to upgrade anyway as she got bigger. I read everywhere that the bare minimum is 10 gallons (45 litres). How big should the aquarium be? I have a long aquarium, rather than tall.

Yes, I always used dechlorinator to treat the water and let it stand for 24 hours. The reason I changed the water so frequently is because everywhere I read it said that ACFs are very messy and need frequent water changes (one site even said 95% water changes twice a week). On average it seemed to be roughly 40% twice a week.

Thanks for the info about the food. I had just ordered some Reptomin yesterday as I heard it is good for ACFs, but now it's too late

The substrate I had was large and small gravel and aquarium sand... Is it better to leave it bare?

Thanks for taking the time to help.

[mpmistr]

I would switch substrate to bare bottom or smooth sand (avoid the sharp stuff) or large pebbles (though I find these hard to clean).

Reptomin would of been a lot better for your frog than the freeze dried stuff, honestly I would just toss that stuff out because it's really not a good staple food for ACF (or anything else for that matter).

10 gallons is the bare minimum on most care sheets and yeah 13 gallons would be okay but me -personally- I think ACF need larger tanks to be happy, though I doubt this led to any premature death.

Did you have a filter of any sort? Biofiltration is really kind of a must for these frogs, large water changes are good now and then but I would rather have a filter and do a 50% weekly water change.

[Verdure]

Thanks for all the info. I thought I was giving her a good diet... I should have come here first. I will also upgrade any future froggies to a larger tank.

I didn't have a filter because I thought that it would be too intrusive, but I was considering purchasing the Whisper filter when I got a new tank (plus less frequent water changes would have been welcome), are those good for ACFs?

Once again, thanks for all your help. I should have come here sooner.

[mpmistr]

Thanks for all the info. I thought I was giving her a good diet... I should have come here first. I will also upgrade any future froggies to a larger tank.

I didn't have a filter because I thought that it would be too intrusive, but I was considering purchasing the Whisper filter when I got a new tank (plus less frequent water changes would have been welcome), are those good for ACFs?

Once again, thanks for all your help. I should have come here sooner.

@Verdure -- Filtration is definitively a must especially in that small of a tank. They do no harm to frogs what so ever, don't believe what you may have read on some care sheets. A Tetra Whisper filter would work fine, get a beefy one I would suggest the Whisper 40i model. I use a rather beefy Eheim (2217) on my 40(US) gallon tank and my frogs show no ill effects, in fact they hang out near the spray bar often.

ACF produce solid feces and are messy animals as you probably know, you can never have enough filtration.

@reptileszz -- Wet/frozen foods are found usually in the freezer section or your local fish store. They usually come in blister packs.. examples would be frozen blood worm, mysis shrimp, brine, krill, silversides all make a good occasional *treat* though I wouldn't recommend any of that food as a staple. There is also beef heart in those fridges, I recommend against it.. I don't think frogs should be eating much if any mammal flesh (the fat of mammals tends to block arteries in amphibians over time).. when would an ACF ever eat a COW?

Your reptomin/HBH pellets are a good staple, I feed my frogs reptomin and they seem to be doing very well. Only one of my frogs will bother with HBH pellets, my frogs are a big large now for them and for some reason 2 out of 3 couldn't care less about them and just ignore them. It takes a while but your frogs will look to the surface for reptomin eventually, my advice would be to hand feed your frogs near the surface and stop feeding sinking pellets.. eventually they WILL learn to look to the surface for food. When I go near my tank my frogs go NUTS near the top of the water because they know that's where the food will be. I've seen my frogs actually jump a few inches biting at the air! They can and will learn, especially when it comes to their meals!

In my opinion once ACF get large they do really well on candian nightcrawlers, the ones you can buy at bait stores or even walmart. I feed earthworms to my frogs probably more than anything else. One large nightcrawler every other day keeps them fat and healthy. Since they swallow them whole there is little mess or clean up too, besides their rather enormous poops afterwards lol.. I also feed my frogs crickets now and then, since in the wild they would probably consume a lot of arthopods (I would love to get some dubai roaches some day for my ACF).

[reptileszz]

Freeze dried foods are not good for these frogs long term, they can also cause intestinal issues. A combination of wet/frozen, live, and pelleted foods seem to work best.

Hi, I am very sorry for your loss. Michael, I have a question about the above "wet/frozen" foods. Can you elaborate on what those are? I am new to the ACFs and have reptomin (if they ever seek out food that floats), the HBH frog pellets and now the special xenopus sinking pellet from xenopus.com but I want to vary the diet if I can. I am not planning on using anything freeze dried as I have heard they are not good.

Thank you,
Carole