# Front leg trapped in a blister



## BugBear (Jun 16, 2021)

Hey! I'm back with another tadpole leg question! Raising tadpoles is not for the faint of heart and I don't know how you guys do this regularly! My question today is about a different tadpole. This guy was the first to get his back legs. A few days later he floated on his side and there was a big bump on his side. A few hours later he was swimming around with a front leg! He no longer looked like a tadpole and instead looked like a three legged frog. He tail has decreased by about half its size.

Yesterday he was again floating but on his other side. Big bump again, but there is a thin blister and I can see his other front leg inside. It's gotten bigger over the last 36 hours, but the leg isn't coming through. He's content to just... float around the tank. When he moves the three legs that are out I can see the trapped leg moving around, too. I can see his foot just resting against the inside of the blister. It's bizarre. I've put him on the basking rock several times so he's not just floating around but he kicks his back legs until he's off of it and goes back to floating. The bump seems to have stabilized in size over the last few hours but he seems less feisty. He's not fighting me when I move him to the basking rock and he's just sitting there now.

Do I lance the blister? Would this let the leg out? Or do I just wait? It seems like it would be so easy to fix this with a sterilized razor... 

Thanks for the help!


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

Amphibians are well innervated, can and do feel pain. 

Many times keepers are put to the wire and there are triumphs and failures we cant take to the table for responsibilities sake for it to be copied, or twisted in context. 

There seems to be developmental anomaly going on. According to literature these can be because of water chemistry, parasites, sometimes predatory damage.

Perhaps a university or arav veterinarian could help but I dont feel positive telling you to cut into him.


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## Chris S (Apr 12, 2016)

It's not really a blister...it's just how the legs develop.

Overall he looks a bit messed up, but give him a few days to see if the leg pops out.


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## BugBear (Jun 16, 2021)

Sadly he did not make it. We had decided last night to leave him alone until the morning and then reassess what to do. He didn't make it through the night. We'll never know what would have happened if we had done the incision yesterday, but we did a post mortem incision and a perfect leg popped out. Who knows. I guess this is why there are so many tadpoles in the spring that you can't see the bottom of the pond and only a good number or frogs...


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## Chris S (Apr 12, 2016)

BugBear said:


> Sadly he did not make it. We had decided last night to leave him alone until the morning and then reassess what to do. He didn't make it through the night. We'll never know what would have happened if we had done the incision yesterday, but we did a post mortem incision and a perfect leg popped out. Who knows. I guess this is why there are so many tadpoles in the spring that you can't see the bottom of the pond and only a good number or frogs...


I think he had enough problems going on that the leg would have made no difference. In the wild, he would have likely been very quickly consumed by a predatory insect or bird. Nature's way of keeping the gene pool healthy.


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

Yeah, its really not that great an idea to experimentally cut on guys even if they are plentiful.

Another choice is to keep them from becoming frightened in your care, and make them as comfortable as you can to ease their way.

As a precaution I would make sure the kids wash their hands after dealing with the tads, their water etc, especially if they are real little.


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## Fahad (Aug 25, 2019)

Metamorphosis is complicated and things can go wrong -- out of hundreds of metamorphs I've raised, I've seen similar twice. Both times they failed to fully metamorphose and expired. I don't think it's the leg issue so much as the other badly coded genes that result in expiration.


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## bulbophyllum (Feb 6, 2012)

Fahad said:


> Metamorphosis is complicated and things can go wrong -- out of hundreds of metamorphs I've raised, I've seen similar twice. Both times they failed to fully metamorphose and expired. I don't think it's the leg issue so much as the other badly coded genes that result in expiration.


I agree. 

I'm a firm believer in letting things like that take their course. No need to pass on bad genes.


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