Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My PacMan frog's stomach is all broken down and bleeding....WHAT on earth happened to him? Did he soak too long in his water bowl.? I have never seen this ? He has open sores on his abdomen....and I don't know what to do..
Can anyone help me.

PAlan

he needs to get to the vet ASAP! it may be too late as it is, but you need to try. soaking too long wont do this, it may have to do with conditions that arent clean enough, what is your cleaining schedule? what substrate do you have?

are you sure it's blood? Might be redleg. If it's blood, get him on nothing but wet paper towels and change them frequently until he heals. Remove anything grainy or sharp from his tank. If it's red leg, see a vet. In fact, if you can foot the bill I would see a vet anyway.

Actualy the red seen in some presentations of redleg is blood that has seeped from ruptured capillaries and other blood vessels.

I would strongly suggest placing the frog on a clean substrate like unbleached paper towels and taking it immediatly to the vets.

Ed

are regular paper towels unbleached? I don't know how to tell...

white paper towels are bleached, brown ones are unbleached.
In an emergency, bleached paper towels can be used but it can irritate the skin.

Ed

Should I crumple these paper towels into balls and make a substrate like that or shred them, or just lay them down flat in many many layers?

Just lay several layers down flat for the bottom substrate. Some of the towel can then be crumpled up to allow the frog to hide under it to feel secure. Horned frogs produce a lot of ammonia and should have thier towels cleaned and rinsed on a daily basis.

Ed

i have always used white paper towels and i change them out about twice a week. this method has never given me any problems and i have never lost a pacman to anything while using this method. so i dont agree with either of those "requirements".

Your position contradicts the published data see Amphibian Medicine and Captive Husbandry, Krieger Press, 2000 for the details.

Ed

thats fine, but it has always worked great the way i do it. and i go by experience, not always by what a book or magazine says. i frequently find "problems" and incorrect info in books, and many contradict eachother, so then what? i go by what has proved to work perfectly for me again and again and again.

And have you reviewed the book I referenced?? There is a reason I cited that one as opposed to some of the generic pet store books...

Okay, you have not noticied any overt syptoms of irritation, did you get any histiology performed on the frogs when they died to make sure that there wasn't any issues with the towels??

Ed

i havent had any die while using wet paper towels, so i didnt have any dead frogs to have any tests run on.

If I understand you correctly,
you have
1) not kept any horned frogs until they die and/or
2) have not had them die while on the bleached paper towels regardless if they were kept on them in the past.

Ed

no, i have not killed them while on wet paper towels, but i have had a couple die on me. so what point are you trying to make now that you have set me up and i admitted to what you posted? you may be an expert and go by what ever books you have and the experience you have gained by using them, but i am simply saying what has worked well for me.

snip "no, i have not killed them while on wet paper towels, but i have had a couple die on me." endsnip

If you go back and read the whole thread, I did not post that the bleached paper towels would kill the frogs, I posted that it could irritate them and this could be a problem, you jumped onto how you never had one die on the towels so they were fine. (I'm not sure why you think I am accusing you of killing frogs....)

snip " so what point are you trying to make now that you have set me up and i admitted to what you posted?" endsnip

If you want to feel that you are setup then that is your problem, but that was not the intent. I wanted to be sure I understood what you were saying before I made any further comments.
The fact that none of your frogs died while on the bleached paper towels does not mean that the bleached paper towels were not irritating the frog or even bothering it in other ways. Chlorinated organic compounds (which are leached by bleached organic products such as bleached paper towels which is why unbleached paper towels should be used as a substrate although in an emergency bleached ones can be used) can potentially cause problems such as liver damage which can cause or contribute to death, days, weeks, months or years later but this damage will not be noticed unless a necropsy is performed on the frogs and the histology closely examined. So unless the frogs are necropsied, the gross observation will not show a link to the problem. As we are dealing with living animals, some frogs may not overtly show the irritation as it could vary depending on some conditions such as brand, length of time exposed or potentially even the pH of the tap water, to disregard the documentation of the problem in the literature is analogous to ignoring the documentation in the literature that exposure to benzene can cause liver damage.

snip " you may be an expert and go by what ever books you have and the experience you have gained by using them, but i am simply saying what has worked well for me."

I have never said I was an expert, but I pay attention to the literature so I do not have to keep reinventing the wheel (see my comments above) and can try to optimize the care of my animals.

Ed

ok.