Hi All,

A week or more ago one of my toads started swelling rapidly. When he looked something like a tennis ball with legs I started treatment. I isolated him from his friends in a small 10 gallon hospital tank. On thursday while he was taking a bath in antibiotic solution (50mg/1gal tetracycline and tea tree extract) I pricked his swollen skin with a sterile needle. He deflated over the next thirty minnutes with a cloudy liquid (no blood or anything). I have been giving him a bath twice a day for thirty minnutes each in this antibiotic solution with little hope that he survives because the condition is usually fatal.

His pin ***** hole has fully healed and I am no longer able to tell where I pricked him. He ate for the first time today (a wax worm out of my hand). He is still a very sick toad and unable to catch his own prey. I never expected him to make it to this point. Does anyone have any suggestions on what I should do next? I plan on continuing the baths for a few more days (10 days total) and will keep the poor guy in isolation until he looks healthy. Should I do anything special with his diet or try anthing else?

oh man, good luck with this one. I would steer clear of wax worms, only because they are not very nutritious, and mostly fat. You could try a gut loaded cricket and use feeding thongs, or pull off the crickets legs so it can't get away. Don't forget the vitamin powder.

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My name is Liz
Do what's best for the animal, not what's best for you.

Thank you for your responce and advice. I'm not super positive at this point and I'll wish I would've taken pictures when he looked like a tennis ball if he recovers. But he is my favorate toad, so I'm really pulling for him (Maximilian is his name). I've never heard of feeding thongs, but i'll pick some up at the pet store. I'm afraid I'll get too excited that he is eating and feed him too much, is that possible?

I'm sad because Dropsy is caused by improper care. I'll keep his progress updated.

Uh that should be "feeding TONGS"!

Feeding THONGS would be something else altogether!

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Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!

BAHAHAHAHAH, my bad

Well, if dropsy is caused by improper care, what can we do to help you with better care in the future?

__________________
My name is Liz
Do what's best for the animal, not what's best for you.

Honestly, I think you're doing a lot more now than most people would think to do, or even think to suggest. Dropsy can be tough to treat, but everything you did was in the right direction. Keep him in a sterile environment while he's being treated. A complete overhaul of his habitat may be needed in order to both prevent it from happening again, and to keep him from suffering any other ailments in his weakened state. This is all assuming he makes it, but it sounds like he's not doing too bad, so here's hoping

What was his habitat like?

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Hi All-

Sorry I haven't posted in such a long time but thank you very much for all of your help! It is my most sincere pleasure to tell you all that Maximillian survives! She was uber sick for a while with dropsy but after she has been eating well and moving around well again I decided to remove her from isolation. two weeks ago or so I moved her back in with her friend Artimus (also a western plains toad, same age and size). They are both doing well and show no negative signs. She was so very sick for so long that I had seriously considered mercy killing her, glad I didn't.

After much thought I feel that the problem was caused by a vine plant that was hanging inside the cage (in order to give them some natural leaves and make the cage look good). I completely ripped apart the cage after I found Max with dropsy and sterilized the entire thing using the same 50mg/gal tetracycline solution/ tea extract solution. I even gave artimus a similar 10 day regimen of baths (although he didn't appear sick).

After I removed the plant I noticed it smelled kind of not good. I took it out of the pot and noticed that it had some sort of biofilm growth on it. The plant had constant exposure to the frogs and I think that may be the source of the infection. I threw out everything in the terrarium except for the glass itself and the water dish both of which were rinsed with 95% ethanol, dried, and soaked in the tetracycline solution.

I kept Maximillian in isolation perhaps to long, but I didn't want to take a chance with Artimus contracting dropsy because the resources said that it was highly contagious.

The major problem for the isolated 10gal tank that has been Maximillian's home was humidity. I kept the cage extremely minimal and cleaned it 2x daily, but as it wasn't filled with the tropical soil (the bed-a-beast type stuff) so it was difficult to keep humid enough and was a pain to maintain because of the constant cleaning (which meant a higher volume of water I had to dechlorinate) and the hand feeding that went on for about a month. But it was all worth it in the end!

If anyone is interested I'll give a detailed post of exactly what I did step by step in a way that isn't my typical misspelled stream of conscious.


P.S. Furryscaly, thank you for your comments, the habitat is just a 20gal (30"x12"x12") terrarium with the bedding being "all living things tropical soil" they had one of those logs cut in half to hide under (although they mostly dug), they had the vine plant, a water dish that was possibly about 4"x6" and 3" or so at the deep end and a flat light stone looking piece of plastic that they were supposed to dig under, but mostly just avoided. A half of a shell that was filled with water that they mostly avoided. At night they would climb on the half a log and I've been thinking of getting something cool for them to climb around on.

Sounds like things are going great, it is good to hear that your toad pulled through with flying colors.

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“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny…'"
- Isaac Asimov



TKE:TT:118

so good that she made it! If you want to try a live plant again, I would suggest pothos, It thrives in the moist conditions. Ivy tends to rot.

__________________
My name is Liz
Do what's best for the animal, not what's best for you.

way to go! sounds like it will do just fine.
So a plant can cause dropsy in a toad?? wow heres to learning something new. Good luck

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Just because you have an animal that isnt dead doesnt mean you know how to take care of it