Axolotls and frogs?

[rneowth]

Hey! I'm generally of the "don't mix 'em" camp, but I have a friend who has a large (about 8-9 inch-long) axie and an African Clawed Frog in the same tank. The two seem to get along fine and don't bother each other or fight, and neither is big enough to eat the other.
Is this an okay set up? My girlfriend really wants to get a frog tankmate for our axolotl when it's large enough to be safe, but I didn't want to do so if it would endanger the lives of either animal.
Thanks!

 

[Skudo09]

I would not recommend keeping frogs in the same tank.

Some people do say they have been lucky enough not to have issues with mixing species and either species picking on the other one. However it is against general advice and it is more out of luck than anything else that nothing negative has happened. In my opinion, mixing species is really a bit of a gamble and just because nothing has happened so far does not mean it won't happen in the future.

Secondly, each species has different care requirements and unless you can meet both species requirements without making sacrifice to each animal's conditions (as in being able to provide optimal conditions rather than just providing conditions both species can just tolerate), I don't recommend it as it is not fair to either species having to live in suboptimal conditions purely for our want to keep these species together.

 

[allied123]

Also I just had a scare with one of my African dwarf frogs, I thought he might have chytrid, and it just made me want to mention that you need to be wary of disease too, I don't think axies can get chytrid but there may be some other diseases that a frog could carry and show no signs of illness while that same disease could kill your axie.

 

[Stupot1610]

Xenopus laevis are known carriers of chytrid, without even mentioning the issues with mixing the species in the first place. They may look happy or fine but they almost certainly are neither.