Here’s How To Treat A Bloated Albino African Clawed Frog

Since the albino African clawed frog is a rare species of frog, keeping this rare frog as a pet is certainly a big deal. Moreover, it’ll be a matter of great concern for the owners when they notice their clawed frogs become bloated. The new owners often ask around- how to treat a bloated Albino African clawed frog.

To fix the bloating in your Albino African clawed frog, you can apply a few methods.

If the reason for bloating derives from the tank, you should fix the tank at the beginning. Afterward, you can treat your bloated frog by adding Epsom salt to the water. Besides salt baths, antibiotic medications can also help. However, you should seek professional help from a vet if you want to drain excess water from the frog with bloating or dropsy.

In this article, you’ll get to know about the signs, causes, and prevention of bloating in your Albino African clawed frogs. Besides, I’ve shed light on detailed ways of treating a bloated Albino African clawed frog.

How Do I Know If My Albino African Clawed Frog Is Bloated, Fat, Or Constipated?

In the mentioned three conditions, albino African clawed frogs get swollen. So, it becomes hard to determine whether your frog is fat, bloated, or constipated.

Your Albino African Clawed Frog Is Bloated

If your albino African clawed frog is bloated, the abdomen of your frog will be swollen. In addition, you may notice the limbs of the frogs getting swollen. Besides, the skin of your bloated frog gets loose, whereas frogs generally have tight skin.

Your Albino African Clawed Frog Is Constipated

In case of bloating, your albino African clawed frog will be bloated due to excess fluid build-ups. On the other hand, a constipated clawed frog will be swollen due to gas accumulation. In the case of a constipated frog, your frog will have a normal state of limbs.

But, their abdomen or stomach will be swollen. The main sign of a constipated frog is its dry and small feces. If you find these symptoms in your albino African clawed frog, your frog must be constipated.

Your Albino African Clawed Frog Is Fat

On the other hand, you may not readily determine if your albino African clawed frog is just fat. After all, this condition does not happen overnight, like bloating. You may notice your frog weighs more gradually. Besides, a fat albino African clawed frog becomes bigger.

2 Levels Of Albino African Clawed Frog Bloating

The bloating condition of your albino African clawed frog varies according to the severity of the symptoms. There are mainly two levels of albino African clawed frog bloating.

1. Minor Bloating or Soft Bloating

In the initial state, you might notice your albino African clawed frogs bloated overnight. Your bloated frog may not feel much discomfort or pain in the beginning. This phase is named minor bloating.

Your bloated albino African clawed frog may move slowly in minor bloating. Some frogs accept food too. Generally, the bloated frog may feel less pain or no pain in minor bloating. The experts name it soft bloating.

2. Major Bloating or Hard Bloating

If you keep your bloated albino African clawed frog untreated, the bloating condition may turn to hard bloating. In this condition, your sick frog will be severely swollen up and unable to move.

The swollen abdomen of your bloated frog may become hard. Your bloated African-clawed frog may float weightlessly on the surface. This condition is termed major bloating.

In major bloating, the sick frog stops eating entirely. Since the excess fluid build-ups create immense pressure on other organs, your bloated clawed frogs feel much pain.

6 Causes Of Bloating In Albino African Clawed Frogs

Bloating is not a disease but rather a symptom of an underlying problem. There remain several causes of swelling condition or bloating in your albino African clawed frogs. Let’s see 6 causes of bloating in your frogs.

1. Impaction

When your albino African clawed frog swallows up any foreign bodies, it’ll cause impaction. The foreign bodies will create blockage in the digestive tract of your frog.

As a result, your albino African clawed frog will start swelling as it can not digest foreign bodies. It happens when you keep the wrong substrate in the tank of Albino African clawed frogs.

2. Bacterial Infection

Bacterial infection is a severe reason for bloating in Albino African clawed frogs. When bacteria start growing in the intestines, it causes inflammation.

Such things happen when the quality of water decreases. Also, keeping leftovers for a long time causes bacterial growth in the tank.

3. Improper Diet

The new owners might feed their albino African clawed frogs wild-caught worms, insects, etc. In such cases, there are risks of getting bacteria and viruses from these foods.

As bacterial or viral infection causes bloating, your albino African clawed frog may get bloated due to not getting safe foods. On the other hand, lacking calcium makes clawed frogs bloated sometimes.

4. Parasitic Infestation

Your albino African clawed frog can be bloated because of parasitic infestation. There’ll be excess gas accumulation in the intestines when your clawed frogs have a parasitic infestation.

5. Water Retention Or Dropsy

If there are excess fluid build-ups inside the body, this fluid retention can cause bloating in your albino African-clawed frogs. Moreover, this excess fluid can create pressure on other organs. Such water retention is a sign of several underlying problems or diseases.

6. Inflammatory Diseases

Several types of diseases can make your albino African clawed frogs bloated. These inflammatory diseases are renal failure, cholecystitis, pancreatitis, etc. If you don’t find any inconstancy in the tank, you should check out the signs of possible diseases in your bloated frogs.

6 Ways To Treat Albino African Clawed Frog Dropsy

You can always give a shot to prolong the lifespan of your albino African clawed frog with dropsy. For this, you should know about the possible ways of treatment for dropsy. Let’s see 6 ways how you can treat albino African clawed frog dropsy.

1. Quarantine Your Sick Frog

When any pet becomes sick, your first responsibility should be quarantining your sick pet. Although dropsy isn’t contagious, you should remove your sick albino African-clawed frog from the old tank.

Another reason behind suffering from dropsy is poor water quality. You can also check the water parameters before shifting your sick frog.

Another motive to quarantine your sick frog is for starting the treatment procedures. If your sick clawed frog has tank mates, the medications will affect them also. For these reasons, you should quarantine your albino African clawed frog with dropsy at the beginning.

2. Salt Bath

It’s a common trick to reduce swelling with the help of salt. If your albino African clawed frog suffers from dropsy, you can add salt to the water to draw off the excess fluid.

But, the drawback is that your albino African clawed frog is not a saltwater frog. So, adding salt to the tank may take the life of your sick frog.

For this reason, you should use only aquarium salt if you want to follow this procedure. The experts suggest using 1 tablespoon of Epsom salt per gallon.

But, you shouldn’t directly add salt to the water. Firstly, take one spare tank with dechlorinated water. Mix the Epsom salt with the water.

You can keep your albino African-clawed frog in that spare tank for an hour. Afterward, you can take back your sick frog to the treatment tank. Otherwise, you should add the mixture of salt and water to the frog aquarium slowly.

3. Draining The Excess Fluid

Since dropsy causes excess fluid build-up in clawed frogs, you might want to drain out the fluid. It’s not your task to do at home. It can be a life-threatening step.

You must require professional help in such a case of draining the fluid from the abdomen of your African-clawed frog.

4. Fixing The Tank

The root cause of dropsy starts from the environmental condition of the aquarium. Hence, you should start fixing the tank.

In the beginning, you have to remove all items from the tank. Don’t forget to siphon the substrate and discard the media filter of your albino African-clawed frog tank.

Further, you can boil all durable décor items and furniture to disinfect them. However, the most significant step is to change the water in the tank.

Sometimes, these frogs suffer from dropsy due to exposure to pollutants or harmful pesticides present in tap water. By fixing the tank environment, your African clawed frog may get cured from dropsy.

5. Antibacterial Medications

Another reason for dropsy in albino African clawed frogs is a bacterial infection. So, antibacterial medications can help your sick frog to fight against dropsy when bacteria cause dropsy in your clawed frog. There are several popular antibacterial medications for this.

Such as- Enrofloxacin, Mardel Maracyn 2, Maracyn Plus 2, etc. You should choose such antibiotics that are a specialty for gram-negative bacteria. Generally, the owners use these medicines on the back of the frog twice a day. Although the medicines should be kept for 30 minutes, you should confirm the dose from the vet.

Giving medications should be the last step to save your albino African clawed frog with dropsy. If your frog doesn’t improve by other methods, you should apply medications by taking the suggestion of professionals.

Like bacterial infections, albino African clawed frogs may get infected with fungus. If you wonder why your clawed frog has a fuzzy foot, you must not miss this article.

6. Euthanasia

If nothing helps, you can choose this heartbreaking path to reduce the pain of your frog. Surely, nobody wants to do euthanasia humanely to their adorable pets. If your sick frog does not improve, euthanasia can be a great choice to help your frog.

How To Drain A Bloated Albino African Clawed Frog?

It’s an old method of relieving your bloated albino African-clawed frog from the pain of excessive fluid pressure. To drain the excess fluid of your frog, you need a needle and a syringe. The experts draw out the fluid from the abdomen of a bloated albino African clawed frog.

However, you should not try to drain the fluid of your bloated frog at home. There remains an immense risk of puncturing any organ of your frog while trying to draw out the excess fluid with a syringe. You must take professional help when you want to drain a bloated albino African-clawed frog.

How To Prevent Dropsy In Albino African Clawed Frogs?

Since there is no absolute cure for dropsy, you can take steps to prevent dropsy in your African clawed frogs. Proper initiatives can save the misery of your African clawed frogs. So, let’s see how you can prevent dropsy beforehand.

1. Regular Water Changes

No wonder poor water quality invites bacteria into the tank. Due to bacterial infection, albino African clawed frogs can suffer from dropsy. For this reason, you should change the water of your clawed frog tank regularly.

You can keep a filtration system of three stages. Since wrong water parameters cause stress to your clawed frog, it may lead to dropsy. So, you should change a minimum of 30-50% water twice a week.

2. Filter Maintenance

Filter maintenance is essential to prevent dropsy in albino African clawed frogs. Check this article to know about the necessity of filtration for African clawed frogs. If you do not clean the filter media regularly, the water quality will degrade soon.

As a result, the toxin level of the water increases. There may be the growth of parasites in the tank which will stress your clawed frog. In short, you should clean the filter media every 3-4 weeks to prevent dropsy in your albino African clawed frog.

3. Provide Nutritious Diet

If the immunity system remains strong in your albino African clawed frog, your frog will not get affected readily by bacteria or viruses. Hence, you should provide a varied diet to your clawed frog.

But, you should ensure that your frog will not have any metabolism issues. Proper nutrition can save your albino African clawed frog suffering from dropsy.

Besides, calcium deficiency leads to water retention in Albino African clawed frogs. By observing the changes in skin and behavior, you can be sure that the reason for dropsy in your clawed frog is the lacking of calcium. Hence, you should balance the calcium level in their diet.

4. Avoid Overfeeding

When you provide extra food for your albino-clawed frog, the uneaten foods start rotting at the bottom of the tank. Not to mention, these rotten foods will add ammonia and nitrite to the tank.

Such changes in water parameters can make your African clawed frog stressed. In consequence, your frog may develop dropsy. You should go through this article to know how long your albino African clawed frog can stay without food.

5. Keep Compatible Tank Mates

You might know that stress is one of the root causes of dropsy in albino African clawed frogs. When you keep aggressive tank mates with African albino frogs, your clawed frogs tend to face bullying.

Because of being highly calm-living, there remains a higher risk of albino frogs getting hurt by other tank mates. Internal damages can cause bloating and fluid build-ups in the body of your albino-clawed frog.

Moreover, the wounds caused by the attack of other tank mates can develop infections. For this reason, you should keep compatible tank mates with your albino African-clawed frogs.

You might be confused about choosing compatible tank mates for your clawed frogs. Click here to get a list of 11 suitable tank mates for your African clawed frogs.

6. Perform Husbandry Maintenance

You should sterilize the husbandries of the tank regularly. If you do the regular maintenance of the tank items, there will not be any growth of bacteria or viruses in the tank. As a result, your African clawed frogs should not remain susceptible to a bacterial or viral infection that may lead to dropsy.

Final Words

I hope this article helped you get solutions for treating your bloated albino African-clawed frog. Instead of wasting your time, you should take your bloated clawed frog to a vet as early as possible. Not to mention, taking proper steps of prevention is more significant to prolong the lifespan of your albino African clawed frog.