Questions about chytrid

On a fish forum that I am a part of, there are alot of people who keep ADF's and it seems as if they attribute almost every death of their frog to the chytrid fungus. Is this really that common among ADF's? Are there any sure symptoms? I know the basic stuff about the skin peeling, the frog being lethargic and having spread out legs. They are just to quick to conclude the chytrid.

From what I gather chytrid is a common infection for pet trade Hymenochirus. Unfortunately the only way to make a definitive diagnosis is to do a skin swab and PCR analysis or kill the frogs and take some histological samples. Of course many of those deaths may be of infection free frogs, but chytrid does have people's attention at the moment. I would bet that many of those deaths are just due to poor husbandry.

I would assume if it were chytrid it would cause the death of all or most animals not just isolated individuals...after all it´s extremely contagious.
I too think that a large part of those cases have nothing to do with chytrid. It´s easier to blame the famous illness instead of realizing you are doing something wrong though....

I have dealt with chytridiomycosis in my collection. I had a fire salamander die from it less than a year ago. When the animal became sick I took him to the vet and he had never seen an animal with those symptoms. He had no clue what it may be. The skin was sloughing off, the salamander was lethargic, and was no longer hiding or eating.
I had seen a TV special on Animal Planet a week before about the Amphibian Extinction Crisis hosted by former NEHS member , Jeff Corwin. So that got me thinking that this might be chytriomycosis, so my vet and I began reseaching the disease. We both came to the conclusion that it was indeed the infamous disease. We collected a skin sample for the lab, but the animal died before we could send it off, so we never sent it.
When confronted with the disease we were ill prepared to deal with it. We now know what to do the next time. Hopefully there will never be a next time.

As of yet, I have been very lucky and had no bD issues here. I have been reading up on it quite a bit though.

I have to agree with the others, I suspect a good many of the so called bD deaths in the hobby industry are more due to poor husbandry rather than actual infection. Sometimes I feel like if CNN stated Swine Flu killed an axolotl, we would see a rash of Swine flu axolotl posts here...

Abrahm said:

I would bet that many of those deaths are just due to poor husbandry.

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That's a pretty safe bet. There are several frog forums frequented by the same group of individuals who are relentless in their advocation of dunking your new frog in Lamasil to kill Chytrid because they blame so many deaths on it. While it seems likely that a large number of amphibians in the pet trade may carry Chytrid, in my view it is unlikely that even 25% of the deaths that are attributed to it are right. That's one of the major downsides to the Internet - anyone can post their opinion on a forum and uninformed people have the unfortunate tendency of taking what is written by a stranger as being correct. If they met the same stranger in real life instead and heard that info then I think they would be a lot more skeptical.

Thanks for the responses. I pretty much thought it was due to poor husbandry, too, especially on a fish forum where most of them house the frogs with fish and feed them flakes.

Heres a way to treat your Chytrid infected frogs. I think Salamanders and newts are treated the same way.


The treatment: 10 squirts of Lamisil AT 1% spray (available where athletes foot medicines are sold) in 200ml of frog safe water. . Soak your frog for 5 minutes per day for 10 days. Be sure the entire frog gets covered with the solution.

House the animals in a temporary container, such as plastic shoe boxes, cleaned and sterilized before putting back into the setup after each treatment.....remember each time.

The original housing must be completely sterilized before the treated animal is reintroduced. ALL soil, plants everything must be sterilized or your animal will just get re-infected.

Surfaces that are completely dry for at least 24 hours should be safe. Absorbent materials need additional attention.

Soil can be heated to 200 degrees for 1 hour and be safe to reuse. Be sure to not burn down the house.

Plants can be soaked in a 1 cup of bleach to 1 gallon of water solution. Some plants will not like this and will die. Most survive and tolerate this treatment.

Wood must be completely dried. It can be heated to 150 degrees for 1 hour.

Aquatic frogs, ones that live in water as well as tadpoles can also be treated. Mix a 5 squirts to 200 ML solution. Make as much at this ratio as needed so that your tadpoles or frog can live in it. The solution and frog or tadpole live in the solution full time. Completely change the solution every 3 days doing this three times (9 days).

Hello,
it's a very interesting discussion!

Does anybody have own 100% diagnosis for Chytrid with Pipidae frogs?

Here a link about Hymenochirus and Chytrid: http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/ahc/pdf/july1999.pdf#search="cutaneous chytridiomycosis hymenochirus"

Bye Martin