Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I really hope you can answer- I feel horrible! Some of these questions may sound stupid, but I have no experience with frogs. I apologize in advance for the length of this message- My kids found a frog in our back yard in the foot wash bucket for our pool. The frog looked very healthy and they asked to keep it. I had a large 40 gallon hex fish tank that has been sitting unused for a few years, so I agreed to let them keep it. We set up the tank with a layer of gravel, some large rocks, enough water for him to swim in, some plastic plants, a lily pad, an undergravel filter, and a pretty expensive filter especially for amphibians. We had been feeding him crickets. I was feeding the crickets a combination of things such as potatoes(that's what the pet store was feeding them) and dried krill-which they seemed to like. The frog seemed to be doing quite well in his new environment. He was eating what I thought seemed to be a good amount of crickets daily. I had also been adding a few frog food pellets(from the pet store)-although I don't think he was eating them. The frog was growing considerably. We had him for almost a month and he seemed to be doing great. My kids and I went away for one night-leaving his care to my husband. He checked on him at 7:30 the night we came home-he was fine. There were still crickets in the tank. He went out and came home at 9:30. The frog was dead. The only thing that I noticed was that there were wings from what looked like a moth in the tank. There are a few possibilities that I could come up with. I thought maybe the moth could have been somehow poisonous to the frog(are there any such insects?), the crickets were too large(can frogs choke?), or that the crickets that were in the tank were hidden and he may have not eaten for at most a day(can a frog starve in that time?) Please help if you can. I really need to know what could possibly cause a frog to die so quickly before I go ahead and get them another frog. I really don't know what kind of frog it was as I have searched for a picture and haven't found one. the closest pic on your site is the green frog. He was almost solid dark green, almost brown, with a lighter green stripe on either side of his body. He didn't climb the branch(plastic) that was in the tank and he didn't climb the glass. He spent most of his time sitting in the water with his head sticking out, but he would swim around often and sit on the rocks or in the dish of reptile dirt that I bought from the pet store. I am so sorry this is so long, but I wanted to give you as much in fo as I could to hopefully get an answer to the problem and also an idea on what kind of frog this may have been. By the way, we live in a wooded area with a lake nearby in NJ. Oh and I looked up info on frog illness and noticed that a lot of sites say that red leg(?) can cause sudden death, but there were no signs of this.

It could be just about anything. Wild caught frogs often have parasites, could be harboring disease, etc. One thing to remember is never to use gravel. Frogs do not always have the best aim. In the wild, the whole point is for them to grow as large as they can as quick as they can. So when they want food, they tend to go a bit overboard and will eat the substrate around them. If it is gravel, a good chance of impaction is there. If you would be willing, you could try and call a reptile vet (or a vet that at least deals with exotics) and see if the vet can do a necropsy on the frog (provided you still have it and it has not decayed overly much). Since we can't see the frog and we are not trained vets (at least I am not), it is impossible to diagnose the problems. Sorry for your loss.
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Andy Maddox
AIM: thekingofproduct
MSN: Poloboy32486@hotmail.com
Yahoo:surfandskimtx04
Houston Herp Key
The Reptizone

"A yellow ribbon instead of a swastika. Nothin' proper about ya propaganda. Fools follow rules when the set commands ya. Said it was blue when ya blood was red. That's how ya got a bullet blasted through ya head"- Rage Against the Machine

Thanks for your reply. We do not still have the frog. What should we use instead of gravel that will not clog the filter? I need to know as much as I can before we get another frog. I did have a container of bedabeast in the tank. Should I replace the gravel with larger rocks? The gravel is fairly large gravel though-So what you are saying is that he may have eaten a piece of gravel-Can they choke on it? When we do get another frog-can I put other insects in the tank?

First and foremost, you need to find out what kind of frog you had and what the next one you get will be. Did you check into northern leopard frogs to see if that is what your guy was? The frog could have choked on gravel, but sometimes a frog will manage to get some gravel down. Once it is in the frog can not defecate or digest its food. It is called impaction. It sounds like you had what was probably a semi aquatic species. For most of these frogs, a divided tank works great. A plexiglass divider can be placed a horizontally oriented tank. On one side can be water. On the bottom of the water you can use extremely large rocks, so large that the frog has ABSOLUTELY no chance of even being able to fit them in its mouth. On the other side, a substrate such as bed a beast or another expandable coconut husk substrate works great. I would suggest that if you want another frog you look into some captive bred frogs at a specialty pet shop. Good luck.
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Andy Maddox
AIM: thekingofproduct
MSN: Poloboy32486@hotmail.com
Yahoo:surfandskimtx04
Houston Herp Key
The Reptizone

"A yellow ribbon instead of a swastika. Nothin' proper about ya propaganda. Fools follow rules when the set commands ya. Said it was blue when ya blood was red. That's how ya got a bullet blasted through ya head"- Rage Against the Machine

Thank you for the info. We are going to get much larger rocks than what we have. I have completely cleaned everything and we are probably going to buy the next frog. To be honest, from all of the pics I have been looking at, the one that most resembled what we had was a carpenter frog, but it could have been just a dark colored green frog. I also spoke to someone who suggested that the crickets may have been too large and that sometimes the female crickets have something sticking out from thier backend that could harm the frog. I had noticed a large cricket with what appeared to be long wing like things sticking out. Anyway, Many possibilities to what could have happened. We will have to look around for the right frog-I am interested in a simple frog-that is easy to care for. Something like a green frog or a leopard frog maybe. I don't want a climber or something that gets very large.

It depends where you live in NJ (Where I live down near Vineland they are not common, but wood frogs are common). Carpenter frogs are most common in the half of the state below Trenton and are almost always associated with acidic waters and sphagnum moss.

You may also want to consider an adult whites tree frog.

Ed

if u want a simple frog get a pac man frog. leopards and greens require either a half and half tank or a very large water dish that they can completely submerge in. pac man frogs how ever need a water dish (water up to the shoulders of the frog) and a coco substrate to bury it self in. But your kids may not be too excited by it since it just sits in its water or substrate. But when its feedin time they get mor active.
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Denise (Mom) and/or Jared (son)
Take care!
0.0.1 Brand new baby Ball Python - Eragon or Saphira
1.0 Bearded Dragon - Merlin
1.0 Pixie Frog - Pixel
2.0 Chinese Fire belly Newts - Fred n' Ed, and Ed n' Fred
1.0 Black Cat - Shorty
0.0.1 Leopard Frog
0.0.4 Tanks waiting on us to decide what is going in them! LOL

Another simple frog is the fire-bellied toads. I have a tank set up with larger rocks, filter, room to swim and also some land. These are some of the hardiest frogs I think I've ever bought and they are a little more colorful.

We were looking at them tonight! They don't get very big do they? I read that 2 inches was about the max. I think they may be a good one. Do they climb the glass? Any info about them would be helpful.

We have the tank set up already with a half land half water set up with an undergravel filter and a terrarium filter. So that is not a problem. We were looking tonight at the fire belly toads. Have to research more though.

We live in Wrightstown and our yard backs up to a small manmade lake surrounded by wooded areas. Why the White's tree frog?

If you get a healthy adult they are nigh indestructable as they will take temps into the upper 80s (even the low 90s) will take temps into the very low 60s, can be kept over slightly moist substrate with a water bowl and are easy to feed.
Firebelly toads are easier to aquire and are an easy species to keep.
Ed