Bloated white's tree frog

Hi everyone,

I spent this past weekend out of town and when i returned I noticed my little White's Tree Frog was bloated...he can't really climb the branches or the walls of his tank because he can't seem to get his hind legs underneath him so he ends up slipping down to the bottom of the tank. He's also somewhat dark brown in color.
I have a heat pad under one side of the tank and also a heat lamp which I don't really use much. Current conditions are 75 degrees with 60% humidity. I use ecoearth and some moss as substrate.
What does this mean? He hasn't seemed too interested in food either. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Hi Aimee,

Bloat can have a wide variety of causes (some of which are discussed on this site here (http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/bloatEDK.shtml ). The best option is to get your frog to an experienced vet who will be able to properly assess him and his husbandry, to give the best chance of getting a diagnosis, so I would strongly recommend that.

It would also be worth posting more details of your setup (especially diet/supplementation - metabolic bone disease is not uncommon, and could fit the signs) here, so you can get comments from more experienced keepers. Is that temperature the hottest or coolest part?

Hope this helps,

Bruce.

Aimee said:

Hi everyone,

I spent this past weekend out of town and when i returned I noticed my little White's Tree Frog was bloated...he can't really climb the branches or the walls of his tank because he can't seem to get his hind legs underneath him so he ends up slipping down to the bottom of the tank. He's also somewhat dark brown in color.
I have a heat pad under one side of the tank and also a heat lamp which I don't really use much. Current conditions are 75 degrees with 60% humidity. I use ecoearth and some moss as substrate.
What does this mean? He hasn't seemed too interested in food either. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Click to expand...

Thank you for your response, Bruce. Unfortunately my little guy died a few hours after I posted the thread yesterday :sad:.

I would still really like to know what happened to him. I'd only had him a month...

The 75 degrees F was just the air temp throughout the tank. I'm not really sure what the temp of the substrate above the heat pad was. Like I said, I didn't really use the heat lamp all that much. Nights here are pretty warm right now (60s-70 degrees F).
His diet consisted of small crickets, meal worms, and wax worms. The worms I gave once a week. The crickets were given 3-4 times a week with about 5 at a time.
Before I left for the weekend he seemed fine and was eating well. It just seemed to happen so fast.

I read the article you posted and I'm pretty sure he didn't die of starvation, desication or heat stress. The water dish was constantly full and tank was misted almost everyday. Although when I first found him bloated, he was sitting in his water dish. When he died he'd returned to the water dish...Dont know if that's significant or not.

Any ideas?

Thank you again for your help,
Aimee

Hi Aimee,

Sorry to hear that.

A post-mortem would be the only likely way to get a full answer, but a couple of thoughts spring to mind. One would be the temperatures - almost all animals need a temperature gradient so that they can choose the conditions that suit them. I would also not generally advise the use of a heat mat - the risks of burns and inapparopriate heat direction are certainly there. Having said that, I would doubt either of those would be direct cause of death.

More importantly, you didn't mention supplementation? Invertebrates, particularly shop-bought ones, tend to be very deficient in various vitamins/minerals, notably calcium/D3, and if you weren't supplementing I'd be very surprised if there wasn't a metabolic bone disease problem. Individual animals can react differently to different supplementation regimes, but in general all shop-bought feeder invertebrates need fairly heavy supplementation. Were you using any supplements?

Hope this helps,

Bruce.

Aimee said:

Thank you for your response, Bruce. Unfortunately my little guy died a few hours after I posted the thread yesterday :sad:.

I would still really like to know what happened to him. I'd only had him a month...

The 75 degrees F was just the air temp throughout the tank. I'm not really sure what the temp of the substrate above the heat pad was. Like I said, I didn't really use the heat lamp all that much. Nights here are pretty warm right now (60s-70 degrees F).
His diet consisted of small crickets, meal worms, and wax worms. The worms I gave once a week. The crickets were given 3-4 times a week with about 5 at a time.
Before I left for the weekend he seemed fine and was eating well. It just seemed to happen so fast.

I read the article you posted and I'm pretty sure he didn't die of starvation, desication or heat stress. The water dish was constantly full and tank was misted almost everyday. Although when I first found him bloated, he was sitting in his water dish. When he died he'd returned to the water dish...Dont know if that's significant or not.

Any ideas?

Thank you again for your help,
Aimee

Click to expand...

Yes...sorry I forgot to mention that before. All crickets were dusted with a supplement called Reptivite which, according to the label, has both calcium and D3. My other frog, Tubby, an extraordinarily fat chubby frog, is on the same diet/supplementation and exactly the same tank set up. I've had him for about a year now and he's been great ever since I got him. Do you think an impaction from ingesting the substrate is out of the question?

Thanks for the tip concerning the heat pad. I will take it off and use the heat lamp more regularly.

And also thank you for your responses, Bruce. Your help is greatly appreciated.

~Aimee

Sorry to hear of your loss, Aimee. Thank you to Bruce for being so helpful.

In your opinion Bruce, what do you think the best type of heat to use is? How many Watts do you need?

Kane said:

In your opinion Bruce, what do you think the best type of heat to use is? How many Watts do you need?

Click to expand...

Hi,

For a white's tree frog I would use full spectrum (visible/uv A/uv B) lighting (reptile "2.0" or "5.0" bulb max) plus a heat bulb. Proviso is that the frogs must be able to hide away completely from it if they wish.

Temperature-wise I would initially aim for "basking" hot spot of around 30 C for whites, but this then needs to be modified depending on their behaviour. Cooler parts of the enclosure should be down to around 18 - 20 C, with that also as the background temperature at night. Of course other factors can affect it, but generally if the frogs are hiding away at the bottom of the cage all the time, they're not happy with conditions at the top, whether heating, lighting or some other factor, for example. Similarly if they're directly under the heat lamp all day, it suggests they're not able to reach their desired body temperature (although again other issues are possible).

Again, to stress it more; any herp needs as wide a range of microhabitats (within its natural parameters) as possible. It will "know" far better than we do what is best for it. This means a range (or mosaic) of temperatures, lighting, humidity, hiding places etc are all vital. Note that this requires a larger enclosure than many people provide for smaller pets. It also means that on-going monitoring of the animal is a necessary part of keeping it well, of course - preferences may vary with age, season, etc. I don't believe you can be dogmatic about temperatures; it should be stressed that it should always be tailored to the individual animal, although if it seems far outside recommendations from reputable sources then it should be looked at for any other issues.

Wattage can't be generalised to any extent; it depends on so many environmental factors. The temperature, not the wattage, is the important thing.

Hope this helps! While straightforward answers might be nice, I don't believe simple dogmatic precise figures are a good idea, though obviously initial guidance is necessary. Looking after them properly requires taking published figures as a guide, and observing and thinking about what you're providing them.

Sorry, off soapbox now.

Bruce.

Had similar experiences over the years with different species of frogs getting bloat whilst others in same cage were unaffected. For whites 72f is enough through the day in the warm part turn heating off at night nowhere in the world is it a constant temp day and night and let it drop down. Don't have a water dish in the viv but spray every day. Feed on pinkies once A WEEK try foliage sweepings slugs snails earwigs bluebottles the more varied a diet the better, cockroaches are good also but don't let them escape in to your house and if you have a large pet-pal place them outside June July August . Bloat can be brought on by stress and poor diet and also poor quality water from the tap [and to think we drink it] Dont be put off by a failure give it a few weeks then try again they are brill frogs :kill:

Thank you, all, for the encouraging words and suggestions. I think I might take your advice, vincent, and give it another go soon. I plan to upgrade my crested to a 30G in the near future, which would leave me with an empty tank.....:wacko: