African Clawed Frog is losing color

[mpmistr]

Xenopus can change color to some degree as Geoff stated with his article.

Have you thought about feeding your clawed frogs nightcrawlers? The bait shop variety from walmart work fine, I feed my 4 xenopus these and they go crazy. Since you've had your frogs for so long I have no doubt you know how to care for them, though yeah the current water volume is too little for this species.

I think once you've moved them to a large tank things will improve, these guys are messy and like having a lot of space to swim around. The temperature swings are a bit much here, try to keep the tank at 70F or close to that if possible, 65F is a bit cold for these guys and 80F is completely too warm. A larger volume of water will give you more stable water temps, as the large the water volume the less prone to 'swing' it becomes.

I think these frogs will be fine, just move them in to a bigger tank. Make sure they have a cycled tank (take your old filter and move it to the new tank), give them adequate filtration and keep up on your partial water changes with clean, tap water treated with a dechlorinator. Try live foods, clawed frogs simply cannot resist earthworms.

[alecnfrodo]

Thank you so much for the quick reply! I'm hoping that the loss of color just has something to do with hormones, as it said in the article. I took him out today, cleaned his tank really well, and moved my female ACF to another tank. He's still really pale, I haven't heard him sing today (which he usually does constantly), and I noticed that his eyes look darker as well (maybe they just look darker now since the rest of him is so light?) I've read that discolored eyes could be sign of a bacterial or fungal infection, though. Hopefully you've never encountered those problems, but if you have, do you think it could be either of those?

I've thought about feeding them nightcrawlers many times. I always have a bunch left over from fishing trips, but I've never know whether it's safe or not. You just feed them the ones that come in the plastic containers filled with earth? Do you feed the nightcrawlers to them whole or do you have to cut them up a bit first? My frogs are a little on the smaller side compared to some I've seen that could eat a nightcrawler like it was nothing. I'll definitely try giving some to my frogs, though, and I'm definitely going to get a much larger aquarium very soon.

Also, I didn't know that larger aquariums stabilized the temperature. That's really good to know! We've been having 100+ weather here right now, so it's been hard keeping the temp in the house below 75-80. It might be a dumb question, but is there a something you could buy to help get the water temp down? I mean, I know there are aquarium heaters to keep the temperature higher, but how does one make the temperature lower, if there's even a way?

Thanks again for all the helpful advice! I feel a lot more relieved now knowing that you think my frog will be fine, and I'll be keeping all of this in my mind when I go get a new setup.