Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi all, my name is Kirsten. I recently brought home two White's tree frogs. One was visibly ill and died within the next few days. I'm now very nervous and could use some advice. Even if you think something is elemental and everyone should know it please tell me anyway. I got another one yesterday to replace the first one and I really love the little guys. Thanks so much, Kirsten.

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Hi all, my name is Kirsten. I recently brought home two White's tree frogs. One was visibly ill and died within the next few days. I'm now very nervous and could use some advice. Even if you think something is elemental and everyone should know it please tell me anyway. I got another one yesterday to replace the first one and I really love the little guys. Thanks so much, Kirsten.

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First rule of thumb, unless you are a very experienced at a particular species, it's never a good idea to buy any animal that looks visibly ill. It's a survival instinct for reptiles and amphibians to hide all kinds of health problems until it's too late - once they start showing signs of being sick it's almost always certainly too late. It's setting yourself up for failure that you never intended to happen. For first time owners, it's particularly devestating because they think it's something they did wrong when most of the time it was nothing they could control once they had that animal.

Overall, petstores are not very healthy places for herps in the long run when it comes to stress, diet, enviornment, etc. People often go so far as to buy these animals on impulse in order to 'save' or 'rescue' them. On the surface it sounds like a noble thing for the animal, but it means the consumer gets ripped off thrice over...1- the cost of purchasing the animal 2-the cost of supplies and food for the animal and 3- the loss of that investment when said animals dies (plus any additional $$ lost that may have been incurred taking it to the vet to try and save the animal). Purchasing animals from petstores only tends to encourage them to buy more to sell more - if people didn't buy them then it wouldn't be worth their time to sell according to their way of thinking.

Whenever possible... try to buy animals directly from breeders at local herp or exotic shows - you can see the animals, talk with the person that knows the animal, etc. You also have a higher than average chance at getting a strong healthy animal over a weak stressed out one. And for the folks that want to nobly save animals in need of rescue (even though they know they may lose money on them trying to save them), they are often better off seeking animals through local animal shelters or rescues that are not setup to deal with exotics (many are designed/geared to handle unwanted cats/dogs so they are at a disadvantage when they get in exotics...they need people to help them with the stuff they don't know how to care for at those facilities either as foster's, adoptors, or volunteer caretakers).