Albino African Clawed Frog swimming upside-down - 07/13/08
I have three African Clawed Frogs in a 29 gallon tank. They share the space with two spotted Rafael's. In the last two weeks my Albino ACF started acting weird and started swimming a little weird. I was away on vacation for the last week and changed 1/3rd the tanks water before leaving. Upon coming home I found my Albino friend upside-down on the bottom of the tank. I grabbed a net to take what I thought was my dead frog out of the tank only to find that my frog was very much alive.
<Well that's good news at least. In any event, your first stop here would be to test the water, at minimum the nitrite level. Almost all "sudden disasters" in aquaria come down to water quality, and if you've been away, there's every possibility that something went wrong in this regard, and the livestock got sick. I'll put aside for now my general observation that fish and amphibians don't mix.>
Watching her over the last day I see that she still has a lot of energy and a very strong kick, but she has trouble swimming right-side up.
<Not really a symptom of any one thing.>
My frog spends a lot of time in the corner wedged between a gravel filter tube and the side of the tank. I'm thinking she is doing this so as to breath air without trying to figure out which way is up. I also sometimes still find her upside-down on the aquarium bottom. I'm pretty sure she is not eating her regular diet of live crickets and recently added
freeze-dried tube worms (with no luck either.)
<Do remember that these animals won't thrive on a single food item. Frozen bloodworms and live earthworms would both make excellent additions to the diet of these frogs. Freeze-dried foods are, in my opinion, a waste of money. Moreover, not all animals eat them (and none of mine ever seemed to enjoy them).>
The other two ACFs, a male and a female, both seem fine, as do the spotted Rafael's. The only major tank change I made before heading out on vacation was taking old plants that looked like they were dying, and replaced them with new ones. (The kind of live plants that come in a plastic container with a gelatin in the roots that keeps them alive for a while.
<Never seen these. Must be something particular to your country. In any case, being protein-based, gelatin decays under water and adds to the nitrogenous wastes in the system. Could very easily have caused an ammonia/nitrite crisis in your absence.>
These plants have not shared space with any other water animals.) I have two filters running. The pH is often high and I find I am regularly using pH Down to bring the pH level more in line with where it should be.
<Arggghhh!!! Lesson #1 - Don't change the pH unless you also change the hardness. One of the most common mistakes inexperienced aquarists make is to assume that a fish "wants" a certain pH. They do not. Fish don't really care about the pH. What they need is for the pH to be stable. Beyond that, most freshwater species will adapt to anything within the range pH 6-8. What fish DO care about is hardness. So when you have an Amazonian fish and you read it comes from "soft, acidic water", that means your job is to reduce the hardness. Do that, and the pH will go down by itself (sort of, anyway). Change the pH using buffering potions without changing the hardness and all you're doing is creating an unstable environment. No fish wants to live in hard but acidic water overloaded with buffering agents. Blech! If your water is hard and alkaline (basic), then don't worry, you're fish don't care. I think the reason inexperienced aquarists change the pH is because it seems easy to do, especially when compared with softening water using rainwater or an RO filter. But that easiness is illusory! By the same token, this is why so-called soft water from a domestic water softener is bad for fishkeeping -- it's chemical composition is all wrong for most fish, despite the fact it is called "soft water" and so sounds like the stuff you get in the Amazon. It most certainly IS NOT like the stuff in the Amazon!>
I also changed another 1/3rd of the water in the tank yesterday just in case.
<Change more. After a crisis, change 50% immediately, and then another 50% 6-12 hours later.>
My Albino friend is about 2 years old and does not have any skin problems, bloatedness, or red anywhere on its body. I've also heard that female frogs sometimes swim upside-down before laying eggs, but I don't think this is the issue. Do you have any suggestions as to what the problem is and how I can help my small friend?
<Almost certainly either water quality or water chemistry issues. Check these and act accordingly. My prediction would be that if you [a] stopped feeding for a few days and [b] did dechlorinated tap water changes to remove all traces of the pH buffer, the aquarium would quickly settle down. Use your test kits to check this.>
I'm also heading away again for a number of days and could bring a separate small aquarium with me to monitor any progress but am wondering if it's best to leave her be. Thank you for any insights.
<Hope this helps, Neale.>