I'm new here, searching for answers for my son, whose green tree frog has gotten extremely thin and stopped eating. It doesn't even look at crickets crawling right past! Its color had also changed from bright green to a brownish-green. The frog does not have any reddish coloration at all.

We noticed this a couple of days ago, and my son suggested we force-feed the frog. We managed to get 2 crickets in and within a few hours, the frog seemed more alert and yesterday it seemed much better. The bright color had started to return, and it was jumping, etc.

Tonight we saw that it was lethargic again and seemed to have gotten even thinner. We force-fed 2 more crickets, both dusted with calcium. As we were getting the crickets from the terrarium I noticed a couple of tiny, pinhead-sized bugs crawling in the soil. Not sure what these were, I suggested that we quarantine the frog. We put him in a small lidded container (with air holes) with plenty of water for the night. We're planning to completely empty out the terrarium, clean everything and put in new substrate, etc. No easy task with a 50 gallon tank with 1-2 inches of substrate & moss, etc.

Any suggestions as to what the problem might be?

Any ideas what those little bugs are?

For future reference, how often should he be completely emptying & cleaning out the terrarium? It's quite large and the green tree frog is the only inhabitant aside from the couple of crickets that he puts in every few days. We use the coconut fiber substrate with a little bit of eco moss over part of the surface. He has lots of plants, both real and fake, all purchased from the pet store.

We have had the frog for almost a year, puchased from a local (non-chain) pet store.

Thanks for any help!