Every American toad i have had as a pet since 2013 has gotten sick and died in the same way, their skin
turns from a nice brownish or greenish color to an almost black color and their perfect
hopping/crawling becomes unbalanced and wobbly and shortly before they die their eating
habits reduce and eventually they stop eating all together.

I have kept my toads in a 24"x12"x15" Aquarium lit by an 18" fluorescent light, room temp
hovers between 69f and 74f year around and is in an air conditioned space, I started off with
coconut husk but didn't work well as bugs would just fall into the holes and cracks between
them and the toad had a hard time moving about so i switched to dirt and peat moss. I have a
small water dish that i think is plastic i got from the pet store and i use only rain water in
the dish and for misting. There is a woods behind my house and i'll often go and collect
various bugs such as ants, spiders, earthworms, potato bugs, etc and during the winter i would
buy meal/super worms. My 1st toad (Curly) lasted 10 months i found her when she was about 1
inch long and grew up to be like 3" long and fat and seemed healthy for the better part of the
10 months until she slowly stopped eating and when she finally died i was with my g/f and
Curly was in my hands and it broke our hearts, we must have cried for a good half hour

I had also found a fully grown male toad (Moe) and than a mid sized toad (Charlie) they were
perfectly healthy living with Curly for a while than if i recall Charlie got sick about a
month later and slowly stopped eating and died and than a few months later Moe had died
followed by Curly a few months later and all were eating well up till they got sick.

After Moe and Charlie died I did some research and found out they might have had a calcium
deficiency so i went out and bought some EXO Terra calcium+B3 powder and had been coating the
food 1 or 2 times a week but even with that Curly still died.

I had also found some baby toads and they were kept in a separate tank and would eat like
crazy but they also got sick the same way (darkened skin, stopped eating, crawling weird).

After that I didn't have any toads for a while so i caught some frogs and converted my
aquarium to hold them and kept them till i found a small female toad (Girly) that was about 3
cm long and she did very well and grew up to an adult and lived healthy for about 11 months,
and while i had her i got a hold of 2 adult males to keep her company but they got sick and
died 3 months later and about 1 week later Girly died but before that i surfed the internet
trying to find out why my pet toads keep dying on me and i came across something that pointed
to a vitamin A deficiency so i went right to the pet store and picked up some Repashy
superfoods calcium+B3 powder that also has vitamin A (400'000 IU/Kg) and started coating
Girly's food in it but it didn't seem to work.

After that i caught some more baby toads and started coating their food in the cal+b3+vit a and
they all did good for like 2 weeks than slowly started dying off 1 or 2 at a time and now I'm
at the present date where i only have 1 baby toad still living and is still eating small
amounts.

I'm currently at a loss as to what is causing my toads to become ill and die, I've tried
everything i can think of, till recently the toads in the aquarium have been living in a lego
house for which they seemed to enjoy but i removed that because i read somewhere that plastic
can be bad for toads or something like that but it doesn't seem like that was the problem as
the baby toads where in a different tank that just had peat moss and no lego. I also tried
something i never done before and that's to use an ultraviolet sunlamp to provide UVB i would
have it about 10" to 15" above the tank and leave it on for 10 to 30 min at a time but that
seemed to have no effect. I've even reduced the amount i handle them.

Please ask me questions I'll provide answers as best i can.. anything that will help solve
this as i feel like I'm cursed or something .