Last Frog Standing
Note: I wrote this posting on March 11 and totally thought I’d posted it (and I was wondering why no one had commented on it), but I just discovered it in my drafts, so apparently I had saved it rather than posting it.
Things have not been going well in the tank.
When I last mentioned the wee frogs here on the blog, we had just got two babies. They didn’t last a week. One day they were happily swimming and playing, floating on the surface and then scooting around. And the next thing I know – we’ve got a floater. I have no idea why they died, but at first I was thinking that maybe they were too little – that perhaps they shouldn’t have been sold so young because they needed special froglet care. At least, that was my working hypothesis… until the other frogs started dropping like flies.
First I found Starsky lying on his back at the bottom of the tank one morning. Honestly, he looked like he was playing dead, but sadly, you cannot train a frog to play dead. Then, a few days later, the same thing happened with Hutch. Hutch had been floating on the surface for much of the previous evening, and I got worried about him, because that was actually how one of the babies was behaving before he died1, but I gave him a little tap and he moved, so I know he was alive. But the next morning, he was lying dead on his back at the bottom of the tank. So now my working theory is that the babies had some kind disease that they brought into the tank and infected the others.
And then there was one.
Copernicus is the last frog standing.
Around the time of Starsky’s & Hutch’s deaths, Copernicus was acting like they were – a bit lethargic and not his usually little froggy self, which got me really worried. But yesterday after he had his dinner2, he really perked up and has been more peppy and playing in the tank, so I’m really hoping that he’s managed to fight off whatever killed the other frogs.
We plan to get some more frogs – African dwarf frogs are social creatures, so it’s better for him to have some frogs than to live solo – but this time I think we’ll keep them in a separate tank to make sure they are really healthy before we put them in the big tank with Copernicus. We tried to get some last week, but the store was out, so we’ll try again this week. Hopefully we can get some little pals for Copernicus!
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oh dear, that is terrible. We had a great aquarium for a few years, but the fish were always dying for one reason or another and it really got me down. I had names for them, got attached, and then the scene you described would emerge. I thought you’d have better luck with the frogs.
I thought so too! A zoologist friend of mine told me that it’s generally difficult to keep anything aquatic alive though. But I’m going to keep trying!
We did aquariums for a while too but it seemed like fish and frogs alike came to our house to die. The only thing we could keep alive was the fish that kept the tank clean. It is so hard to balance the water.
Yeah, I had no idea how hard getting everything right with a tank would be!
i will mail you some plastic ones,,,,, they last forever….lol happy st patrick day
Oh no… this is terrible. Sorry Beth! Hope Copernicus gets some new buddies soon.
Now I am remembering that a high school friend had a fish tank his mother called Dachau. So it wasn’t just me having issues keeping them alive!
Oh no! Sorry to hear this.