# Pumilio Tadpole - How to Cure Bloat?



## Amagaeru (May 6, 2015)

I have a pumilio 'saltcreek' tad that is at morphing stage- just a bit of tail left. 
Was doing fine until a few days ago and didn't look quite right. 
Took pics and posted them on fb frog groups, and consensus is that it is bloat. 

I've since increased flushing out canisters with tad tea (RO+blackwater extract & a bit of boiled magnolia) and added small piece of magnolia leaf to canister.

I had not been flushing the canisters and it gets whatever RO mists in on them, so the water was probably not very clean. Stress of me pointing a pin flashlight in every evening during feeding probably didn’t help either.

Question in, how to treat now that it's bloated? 

I used the search function and read through a bunch of threads - problem is, most of the frogs die anyways when using Ringers solution or left by themselves, and Melafix solution was questioned. I understand that there can be multiple causes, but is typically associated with bacteria. Is there really no standard treatment? It seems like this is a very fuzzy topic of the hobby.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

The problem is that a lot of people treat bloat as an actual disease instead of a symptom of another disease. Unless you can determine the underlying cause of the fluid retention (properly known as ascites), then you can only treat the frog symptomatically. 

Not necessarily in order of frequency 

One of the potential causes of ascites is improper supplementation of the adults, as this results in improper development of the pre-kidney (aka pronephros) and kidneys later in development. This is frequently the cause of tadpoles that look swollen while in the egg and after hatching. 

Another potential cause is bad water quality, which is generally most frequently seen in recently setup deposition sites as the biofilm hasn't had time to develop to enable conversion of the ammonia waste to nitrate. Generally people don't see ammonia toxicity is because they either have leaf fragments and/or RO water in the systems both of which tend to reduce the pH of the water causing the ammonia to be converted to ammonium which is fairly non-toxic. (RO tends to be acidic particularly when fresh, due to filter removing buffering salts while allowing CO2 to remain in solution as a gas. This results in the reaction of CO2 + H2O <=> H2C03 followed by H2CO3 + H20 <=> H30+ + HCO3- the HCO3 can also lose a H+ atom resulting in an additional acidification step but that reaction is pretty small for our purposes). If the ascites was due to nitrite toxicity then changing the water and using a chloride salt is the typical treatment. This is one of the places where Amphibian Ringer's Solution is the ideal supportive treatment to reduce fluid retention. 

It is possible that the issue is caused by a virus, a number of viruses including ranaviruses are known to cause fluid retention. In this case, the only thing you can do supportive treatment and isolation. If you want to test for ranaviruses and chytrid you can take some swabs of them and the adults and send it here RAL - Test : Reptile. 

Bacteria are also a relatively common cause of this symptom, this is in part why a lot of people start to claim the fluid retention is a sign of "red leg" but once again this is more of a syndrome than a disease as more than 20 bacteria are known to cause the exact symptoms. Again, supportive treatment with amphibian ringers solution is critical but antibiotics are generally required to resolve the problem. I would suggest to avoid shotgun treatments with over the counter antibiotics as many of those have either poor efficacy due to the differences in gram positive and gram negative bacteria as well as resistance in the infecting organism. 

A vet can also help symptomatically by withdrawing fluids from the peritoneal cavity and this can reduce some of the stress for the frog as well as making it easier to breath and regulate its fluids. I do not suggest doing this at home as you can lacerate internal organs and make the situation worse. 

This is still relevant on the topic even though it is about caudates see https://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/bloatEDK.shtml 

You might also want to check out https://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/salt.shtml 

some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

The reason a lot of the frogs die anyway is because the fluid retention often indicates a very sick animal and the progression of the disease process can be rapid. 
There are diseases that progress very rapidly in people and cause death shortly after symptoms are observed, some Hantavirus (like in the original 4 corners outbreak), or bacterial meningitus are some examples. 

some comments 

Ed


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## Amagaeru (May 6, 2015)

Ed,

Thank you for all the info- I admit, was a bit overwhelmed with learning as much about this problem as I could. As an update, the little one didn't pull through, no surprise I'm sure. No treatment was given other than flushing with clean tad tea each morning/evening. I have since reduced misting/drain excess water more frequently, and added fresh leaf litter in hopes of creating a healthier environment.

As an update, the parents have since raised another froglet who is doing very well. oow since 9/3/17. Everything looking good and he was climbing around on the glass this morning.
Healthy Froglet

Thank you very much for your insights!


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