All my leopards have redleg

[LeilaNami]

Yesterday and today we lost a couple of frogs from our tank. All of our leopards are showing signs of redleg. From what I understand, it is difficult to treat and most frogs die. Most of the ones left alive are showing only a few red spots around their cloaca where some of the ones acting strange are showing a lot more. They are all still eating and croaking at night. I don't want to sit by and do nothing so I need some help with this. Anyone have any ideas on how to treat it?

[Miss Bianca]

I have no idea about this condition but I wanted to say I hope everything
gets better. Hope all your critters will be just fine, and I hope you get some educated responses.

[ZephAmp]

When my clawed frogs got this I changed the water completely and they were fine in a few days.

[LeilaNami]

Thanks. I took one of them to the vet today. We put some salt in the water and they are getting an hour long tetracycline soak twice a day. Hopefully they'll pull through (especially Fat Albert. He's a monster for a leopard frog) I hope that everything turns out okay.

I really wish there was some way to get antibiotics without having to spend a buttload on an office visit for something I've already diagnosed. I understand why you need to see a vet but I just spent 80 bucks on a 10 dollar bottle of antibiotics for them to say "Oh yeah. Hm, you were right. Here's what you need."

[ZephAmp]

Thanks. I took one of them to the vet today. We put some salt in the water and they are getting an hour long tetracycline soak twice a day. Hopefully they'll pull through (especially Fat Albert. He's a monster for a leopard frog) I hope that everything turns out okay.

I really wish there was some way to get antibiotics without having to spend a buttload on an office visit for something I've already diagnosed. I understand why you need to see a vet but I just spent 80 bucks on a 10 dollar bottle of antibiotics for them to say "Oh yeah. Hm, you were right. Here's what you need."

Tetracyclene is good stuff. I was told to use it on my clawed frogs when they caught a skin infection from some bad feeder fish. I was told to use pieces of beef heart/liver and let the powdered tetracyclene soak into it before feeding.

[LeilaNami]

Tetracyclene is good stuff. I was told to use it on my clawed frogs when they caught a skin infection from some bad feeder fish. I was told to use pieces of beef heart/liver and let the powdered tetracyclene soak into it before feeding.

Interesting. If these soaks don't work, we're going to try an oral application instead.

[ZephAmp]

Interesting. If these soaks don't work, we're going to try an oral application instead.

I suppose you could literally feed the food items (crix or roaches I presume?) straight-up tetracyclene. Or maybe coat them with it.

[LeilaNami]

I suppose you could literally feed the food items (crix or roaches I presume?) straight-up tetracyclene. Or maybe coat them with it.

We actually found a paper on Rana sp. being treated for the infection. They found that all frogs in the group given sulfadiazine orally and chloromycetin orally had a 100% survival rate. 50% of the other group died and the control group that wasn't treated at all had a 100% mortality. This vet said that tetracycline is similar to these antibiotics and has been used to treat the infection. She also said that because their skin is porous, you often only need to soak them and they will absorb the antibiotic anyway.

So far so good. None have died since last night. They are taking their second soak today.

[dtknow]

another thing you might want to do is lower the temps.

[P.jasonius]

another thing you might want to do is lower the temps.

Actually the paper we read suggested the same thing. The results showed that lowering temps to 50F alone (no antibiotic) had a 50% survival rate, but the vet suggested exactly the opposite (raise temps to 80F).
Good news is we haven't had any more deaths since sanitizing the tank and antibiotic soak, so hopefully we won't lose any more frogs... though to be honest I was looking forward to putting our new water snake in there ...might still when he gets bigger

[dtknow]

Raising the temperatures in this case just increases the rate at which bacteria can grow. You'd have to look into the optimum body temp of leopard frogs but I don't think it is 80 degrees-immune response could actually be depressed by overly high temperatures(for reptiles OTOH, increased temps is generally a good thing for sickness). For bacterial infections and cold adapted amphibians even living in the refridgerator crisper is not a bad option.

[P.jasonius]

Raising the temperatures in this case just increases the rate at which bacteria can grow. You'd have to look into the optimum body temp of leopard frogs but I don't think it is 80 degrees-immune response could actually be depressed by overly high temperatures(for reptiles OTOH, increased temps is generally a good thing for sickness). For bacterial infections and cold adapted amphibians even living in the refridgerator crisper is not a bad option.

Yeah that's pretty much in line with what I thought... if any more start to drop I'll probably make room in the fridge for a large kk. Kinda has me wondering what the vet was thinking... like leila said I wish we didn't have to pay a visit fee (just to have what we already know verified) to get a $10 bottle of pills

[LeilaNami]

Right now they are being kept at room temperature. The red spots are starting to go away on most but a couple remain bloated. No deaths since Tuesday morning though.

[4202cvinc]

A friend several years ago showed the amazing ability of copper to cure and prevent redleg. Pre 1982 pennies are for the most part copper. And then again a piece of copper from the hardware store. Put it in their water bowl, copper is known for being very toxic to non vertebrates without harming a vertebrate host. I have been successful using it as a treatment and a preventative for decades now.

[LeilaNami]

A friend several years ago showed the amazing ability of copper to cure and prevent redleg. Pre 1982 pennies are for the most part copper. And then again a piece of copper from the hardware store. Put it in their water bowl, copper is known for being very toxic to non vertebrates without harming a vertebrate host. I have been successful using it as a treatment and a preventative for decades now.

Interesting. The salt is doing the same thing. I'm going to try and find some papers on that. They have about 6.5 gallons of water in their enclosure so I'm not sure how many pennies I would add.