Are Hymenichorus salt intolerant?

One of my female adf picked up a bit of fungus on its toe last week, I was quite surprised as my colony of 2.6.0 has always been healthy. They had been laying and I assumed the female had scuffed her foot when scrabbling about whilst in amplex and had got a fungal infection from the wound, not that there was any evidence of injury. I separated her in a tub and added almond leaves.The following day the fungus had engulfed her foot and the day after it was up to her knee. As the almond leaf was appearing to have little effect I then salt bathed her , within a couple of minutes she was on her back on the bottom of the tank. I pulled her out , rinsed her off with her tub water and placed her back in the tub after dropping the water level to an inch, she was quite active latter in the day and was feeding. the following day the fungus had not increased and looked to be dying off but as the spread had been so fast I salt bathed the her again in a weaker saline solution, again after a couple of minutes she was on her back and unresponsive. I put her back in the tub with a small amount of water covering her, she was breathing but died during the night. I have two questions which I hope can be answered, firstly are hymenichorus generally sensitive to salt bathing ? Secondly , as I appear to have a very nasty form of fungus in my tank what treatment would be appropriate if any of my other adf pick it up ? I am in the process of moving them to a different tank and will be nuking the first with bleach to kill everything in there.

Is this relevant? It sounds rather different to the symptoms your frog showed:

An epizootic of cutaneous zygomycosis in cultured dwarf African clawed frogs (Hymenochirus curtipes) due to Basidiobolus ranarum.

Groff JM, Mughannam A, McDowell TS, Wong A, Dykstra MJ, Frye FL, Hedrick RP.
Source

Department of Medicine, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis 95616.

Abstract

Morbidity and mortality approaching 100% occurred in dwarf African clawed frogs (Hymenochirus curtipes) from a culture facility in central California. Moribund frogs exhibited preference for a terrestrial environment rather than their normal aquatic environment. Affected animals had a slight pallor of the integument but were otherwise grossly unremarkable. Microscopic examination revealed a fungal infection of the integument primarily characterized by the presence of surface and intra-epidermal conidia. Skin cultures of the infected animals yielded an organism identified as Basidiobolus ranarum, based on the formation of conidia in culture with internal cleavage to form sporangiospores. The organism was transmitted to healthy frogs by co-habitation with infected frogs but not by short-term immersion exposure of healthy frogs to homogenized broth cultures of the fungus. Benzalkonium chloride at 2.0 mg l-1 was efficacious in controlling the infection. Although Basidiobolus species are normally found in the intestinal tract of amphibians, the severity of this epizootic indicates that B. ranarum may be an important pathogen of amphibians reared in culture facilities.


PMID:1941429 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Benzalkonium chloride is a quaternary ammonium detergent disinfectant which is available in some cleaners. It is cheap online but may be cheaper allowing for postage at local agricultural merchants.

I have no way to determine what the fungus actually was , it was just a white fluffy mass on the leg. The first salt bathing halted its spread and it lost some of the growth, the frog was active and feeding before the bath and several hours after it but showed an adverse reaction to the high strength salty water. A lower strength bath the following day had the same effect and I think this was the cause of death not the fungus itself.

I had a similar problem with tadpoles and froglets, nor almond leaves, xantacridin and salt helped, sick ones died anyway. Enrofloxacin cured the survivors.

corientalis said:

I had a similar problem with tadpoles and froglets, nor almond leaves, xantacridin and salt helped, sick ones died anyway. Enrofloxacin cured the survivors.

Click to expand...

Thanks, was this a one off attack or has it reoccurred ? If the frogs were Hymenochirus how did they respond to salt bathing ?