African Clawed Frog -Specific treatment for dropsy

[Slugspit]

I have two african clawed frogs, one 12 and one 10 (Steve & Steve Jr.). One suddenly appears today to be sick and bloated. From all I've read, he appears to have dropsy. (I was giving them bloodworms a couple weeks ago when I ran out of their regular food -- did NOT know about the risk they posed.)

They have been back on their regulard food for about two weeks, but today Steve appears to be in distress, and keeps staying at the water's surface. I saw that adding salt to the water is a way to treat this, but I have not seen any specific instructions on how to perform this treatment. Also, some sites recommend adding stress treatment to the water as well. Should these two things be used in conjunction?

Help!
Stacy

 

[librarygirl]

Are you sure it's dropsy and not just bloat? You might try some Epsom salts first, you could just dip the infected frog in a salt bath (using dechlorinated water of course) for an hour per day and see if that helps rather than adding salt to the tank. I'm not sure how much; I've read a gallon of water and a 1/2 tsp Epsom salt (dissolve it in dechlorinated water first). Hopefully someone else will help more but the salt bath could be a start.

 

[Slugspit]

It is not actually dropsy. I got really nervous about putting salt in the water, since I read other accounts of horribly painful salt-induced frog deaths. I took him in to a fantastic exotic animal clinic we have in the Seattle area, and blood tests confirmed it's actually an infection that is causing a buildup of gas in his body. He gets a salt bath (10g salt : one liter water) every other day for 20-25 minutes, and a daily injection of an antibiotic. He's not fond of the injections.