Robyn,

Two of my green frogs just got a lot of redleg. The rest of them may have a little pink, if i am not seeing things. I separated the two infected from the rest. At the pet shop, i just purchased tonight 250mg tablets of tetracycline HCL. Please, advise me as to how many mg's do i need per liter or cup of water - i am pretty sure that i need to administer the medication orally, as a study has shown that with leapard frogs, the only effective way to administer TC HCL is orally, not in emersion. I think it will be too late for the two sick frogs, but not for the others that have been exposed to it and if anything, have only a slight indication of redleg. I feel real bad about this - i didn't clean the water for a week and this maybe why - or it maybe because introduced a wounded frog, which may have carried it as a result of weakened immunity and suseptible skin abrasions that it had before i introduced it (recently).

Note: A consensus seems to be that its 50mg TC per killogram; my frogs weigh around 50 mg - can you help me figure out how much i should put in a litter water and then i can put drops of dilluted TC in their mouths. So, if its 50 mg Tetracycl. for 1000 grams, and my frogs are only 50 grams (i cant cut the capsuls up or measure them by weight) - then in how much water should i dillute a 250 mg capsul (or cut in half and dilluted) before puttin the solution in their mouths?

Thanks.

Steve

Just came back from trying to force feed a frog an estimated 5 mg of TC HCL. I didn't open its mouth because i felt bad and i thing the stress would be excessive and maybe even would break its jaw. So, i dont know what to do. One website which is scholarly and exceptionally scientific explains that with leopard frogs tested with TC HCL, the effect of immersion into a solution of the medication was ineffective, whereas highly effective when injected and force fed. However, many other sites recommend 40 min. baths - so what do you think?

If you want to give a frog say half a milliliter of solution with the pills in it, the frog is 50 mg, the capsule is 250 mg tetracycline activity (if it's just 250 g, you need to know what % of TC it is; most fish pills are only about 50% active!), and the dose is 50 mg TC per kg animal, then if you dissolve one capsule having 250 mg of TC activity in it into a total of 50 mL and you give 0.5 mL of that to the frog, that would be the right dose. If you want to feed a whole 1 mL to the frog, it would require diluting one pill into 100 mL instead of 50 mL. The resulting solution is 5 ppm (mg/L).

That's my chemistry response. As for biology, I'm not at all familiar with redleg disease in amphibians other than knowing of its existence. Therefore, I am not qualified to tell you what to treat with, how much to treat, how to treat, or what to expect. Sorry I don't know more.

Amphibian skin is pretty porous so I think that immersion should have some effect.

Thanks a lot - however, i will first try immersion in CuSO4

Can you tell me how i can make a 2% solution of CuSO4 - if its the same as with salt, it's 2 tbs/gallon.

Is it 2% by weight or volume? There is a big difference. As a chemist, if we're adding solid to liquid, it's by weight %. For liquid to liquid, it's normally by volume %.

If it's by weight, then:
If you want to make a gallon of it, one gallon of water weighs 3783.9 g so 2% of that is 75.7 g. You can't convert that directly from a weight to a volume without knowing the density of the form of CuSO4 that you have. I suggest weighing it if you have a balance. It's a good idea to have some sort of balance around the house if you have pets, especially aquatic ones.

If it's by volume, then:
One gallon has 767.78 teaspoons in it so 2% of that is 15.35 teaspoons or 5.12 tablespoons.

So, I'm not sure from whence your 2 tsp came.

My site has a calculator/converter on it that helps but I can't use it here at work (no Java) so I did the calculations by hand (old fashioned conversion). For the second calculation, it's:
1 gal x (28.3 L/7.479 gal) x (16 cup/3.785 L) x (16 Tbsp/1 cup) x (3 tsp/1 Tbsp) x 0.02 to get 15.35 tsp.