# Little nasty wormies!!



## a Vertigo Guy (Aug 17, 2006)

Well, one of my Lorenzo had partially dehydrated since our house heater was on all day and night. Put the froglet in some water to rehydrate it. Well the frog perked up but died later that night and upon closer inspection, there were lots of little worms swimming in the rehydrate water!! 

I will also mention this frog was slowly going downhill already. Barely ate and progressively became thinner and thinner. I can barely even see these worms much less take a picture but they were there and it was a lot. Im sure it goes without inquery that these worms must have had something to do with the frog's slow demise. I havent any experience with this sort of situation before. 

Can any one else tell me more? How contagious are they? Should I be alarmed? How do I prevent my other frogs from getting infected? Where do they come from? How did I get them to begin with?

Before we get into the discussion of fecals, lets think rather realisticly. I can easily become destitute if I had to test every frog I have much less three times. For the price of doing just 3 fecals I can easily purchase a new assumably healthy frog but Im not one to give up on living animals if they can be realisticly saved. 

Ive seen many animals die despite the best possible care given. If one frog dies among say 20, is it honestly monetarily, forgive me for saying, 'worth it?' 

Regards,
Chris


----------



## Curt61 (Jan 16, 2007)

Hey, I don't know about your worms but I have some worms in my tank that I want to make sure arn't the same ones as yours. I have a 10 gallon breeder that has worms that are about the width of fishing string, and range from half an inch, to 1 and a half inches long, Should I be worried?
Your worms don't resemble the ones I have do they?
Thanks, Curt.

Sorry to Hi-jack your post.


----------



## lacerta (Aug 27, 2004)

Why do parasites always get such a bad rap? I wouldn't be surprised if your frogs all had worms, but I will bet that dehydration, heat and other husbandry issues will kill a frog a lot faster than parasitic worms. Like I have said in an earlier post, parasites are usually the middle domino in the pathogenesis of most definitive hosts. They are rarely the direct cause of death. 
These worms you saw in the bath water, may they have originated from the surrounding soil? Can you ascertain with any certainty that the frog was the only possible source. Was the frog quarantined at the time in a clean separate enclosure? Nematodes are everywhere. Most are freeliving non-parasites. Most are bacteriophages that feed on decay. A dead frog stewing in a warm bath will likely attract many soil nematodes. 
Frogs have been described as parasite bags. They are host to a multitude of helminthic and protozoal parasites, the majority of which are nonpathogenic. In fact for a frog to not have worms would be a most unnatural thing. Some attempt to totally eliminate them. I don't think it is necessary. In the confines of a closed system I think it more realistic to monitor parasite loads, and to provide the best possible care to allow our frogs to have healthy immune systems. A frog's immune system is his best defense. I think in many cases, the total removal of parasites will have a negative effect on an organisms longterm health, especially juveniles. 
George


----------



## Dancing frogs (Feb 20, 2004)

lacerta said:


> Why do parasites always get such a bad rap?


Because they slowly kill their host.

You do have a point though, with the rest of what you said about other husbandry issues.

You don't necessarily have to do 3 fecals to do good...ideally you would, but I say it is well worth it when you purchase a new group of frogs, to spend the $15 and at least have them tested once. One can fairly safely assume that a group of five frogs of the same species from the same breeder would likely be carrying the same thing, if they are carrying parasites, so you could even only do one per species...get the results, if they come back with parasites, you probably should go further. If they are clean, you bought some peace of mind with you're $15.

...Really, is $15 that much money?

I put off testing for the longest time, because by the time I deemed it "worth it" (worth it for me meant starting to get into the >$100 frogs, and wanting them to have the best chance possible of a healthy, productive life) my collection had grown pretty large. Last year I got it over with, and had everything tested, and the results came back very clean.


----------



## a Vertigo Guy (Aug 17, 2006)

George,

My froglets are kept on moistened paper towels so no soils to get worms from. I also house most of them individually. The two lorenzo I have were purchased from Sean Stewart as a possible pair so in my keeping the only other frog the two have been in contact with have been eachother. The frogs were not quarentined as they were not going to be housed with any others than themselves. And both appeared healthy upon receipt. However as I began noticing one frog growing quicker than the other, I separated the two. Afterwards the smaller of the two just slowly began going downhill till its demise. Im thinking the larger frog stressed the smaller one to the point its immune system became compromised. I also rehydrated the frog in a separate external container so it was not in the shoebox when it died.

If the amount of worms I found in the rehydrate water, if thats a healthy population it scares me to see how many it would be if it were a heavy laden frog.

Brian, I see your point in testing. Its probably an excuse, but Ive made an effort to purchase my animals from reputable individuals. If purchased from people I know provide quality animals, would I really need to test or is that be being redundant?

Question about fecal costs. Is it $15 per fecal per frog?

Thanks for the info!

Chris


----------



## lacerta (Aug 27, 2004)

Chris,
I have seen this phenomena many times where one frog will carry a heavy worm load and others exposed to the same parasite will be barely infected, if at all. I believe you are correct in stating that the afflicted frog was immunocompromised, probably from stress.
I have never seen adult internal parasites vacate their host after death though it may be possible. The nematode parasites we see in fecal exams are very rarely the adult, but are instead the eggs or juveniles. Bear in mind that most parasites pass a prodigious amount of young to hedge their slim odds of finding another host. Some roundworms, such as Ascaris will pass up to 20K eggs per day, or 20% of their body weight! Depending on the species of parasite you are dealing with, the amount of shed eggs/juveniles can appear quite high from a relatively light parasite load. And curiously during periods of auto-infection for Strongyloides, very few juveniles are passed at all. 
Fortunately, the most dangerous parasites are not the ones we see in CB frogs. WC frogs are intermediate hosts to many flukes and tapeworms. These parasites have complex lifecycles involving multiple species that are usually a dead end (in a captive host) so do not persist for very long. Usually long enough to harm the host. Most of the parasites that persist for generations in captive bred animals are normally host-specific with a direct lifecyle and the frog is a definitive host (where reproduction occurs). It makes no evolutionary sense for this parasite to harm its host, and most don't.


----------



## Dancing frogs (Feb 20, 2004)

tinctoritus said:


> George,
> 
> My froglets are kept on moistened paper towels so no soils to get worms from. I also house most of them individually. The two lorenzo I have were purchased from Sean Stewart as a possible pair so in my keeping the only other frog the two have been in contact with have been eachother. The frogs were not quarentined as they were not going to be housed with any others than themselves. And both appeared healthy upon receipt. However as I began noticing one frog growing quicker than the other, I separated the two. Afterwards the smaller of the two just slowly began going downhill till its demise. Im thinking the larger frog stressed the smaller one to the point its immune system became compromised. I also rehydrated the frog in a separate external container so it was not in the shoebox when it died.
> 
> ...


When I had the fecals done, that's what the charge was.
I have to say, never been fond of the whole paper towel method...I only do that when collecting fecals.
Sterilized soil or moss has no worms either.
I like to think of myself as a reputable breeder, and I hadn't had fecals done till early this fall.
I also around the same time bought some frogs from a very reputable breeder, had fecals done, they came back clean, and when I shared the news, the individual was actually sort of surprized, as fecals/treatment are not part of their husbandry...just good husbandry otherwise.

George,
Thanks for sharing that info.


----------



## stchupa (Apr 25, 2006)

I agree w/ George that uneccessary treatment is harmful. If you have to, you have to. But poisoning a frog's system to get rid of something it normally lives w/ is damaging for a # of reasons. One being that along w/ the actual parasite being killed all the other symbionts that are needed to maintain proper health are lost in the process too. Probably worse/more stressful than having to rebuild an immune system (which would be effected also). In fact such things as antibodies/white cells are thought to be seperate organisms that have adapted themselves to immitate host structure as to not be destroyed, but the deciders/destroyers themselves. So if that's the case much of his would be lost as well leaving the frog even more suseptable than from the start.
Replenishing a lot has to be emmense stress, not just cellularly but physically on a larger (seen) scale.

Parasites do not kill themselves, but if something stresses the frog (or the parasite) the stress is shared mutually.


----------

