This page is my effort to provide people with information about African clawed frogs. It may eventually branch out into other frog-related information, but African clawed frogs are the type I have experience with. I'm not an expert on them by any means, but I wish I'd thought to seek out information about them before I got mine. . .and I hope I can provide that information to other people.

The first thing you need to know about African clawed frogs is that they are escape artists. More on that in a couple paragraphs. The second thing you need to know is that there are two frequently-sold species of African clawed frogs--Xenopus laevis and Xenopus tropicalis. X. laevis is the species more commonly found in pet stores. X. laevis gets to be bigger than X. tropicalis (X. laevis grows to be about 5-7 cm, compared to X. tropicalis's adult size of 3-5cm). X. laevis also has a tendency to live longer than X. tropicalis. X. laevis has been documented to reach the ripe old age of 30 years, whereas 15 years is a fairly long lifespan for X. tropicalis. I'm not sure whether you should mix the two species in one aquarium--I did put my X. tropicalis in with my X. laevis, but when she swam right at him I went to his rescue. (You shouldn't mix vastly different sizes of frogs in one aquarium because the large ones have a tendency to eat the small ones.) I also don't think that pet fish and pet frogs mix very well (or maybe they mix too well). . .

My advice for a person who plans to get an African clawed frog is to buck up and get a big, expensive aquarium with a full hood and filtration system from the start. Some places (like Grow-a-Frog) sell frogs with ridiculously small aquariums. These aquariums will probably stunt a frog's growth and definitely stunt the frog's spirit. They get dirty fast (even the double ones with a filtration system), and they are a pain to clean. Some people say that you shouldn't use a filtration system with African clawed frogs (because the system supposedly causes unnecessary stress to the frogs). I even read a comment from a guy on a website that said he only cleaned his aquarium once every two years, and I must admit that my first frog seemed to prefer dirty water to clean water until he reached adulthood--he would sulk in a corner whenever I cleaned his aquarium. But most of the people I know of who actually have frogs say that the frogs seem to like filtration systems and will even spend large amounts of time in the agitated part of the water. [Side note: Bernard {my x. tropicalis} does not like his filtration system as well as Ghost {my x. laevis} likes hers, but he spent more of his life without one, I think.]

The most important thing to remember when you get an aquarium, though, is that African clawed frogs are more talented than Houdini at escaping. Get an aquarium with NO frog-sized holes ANYWHERE. Of course, some air flow is necessary--your frog won't be able to live without it. But air transfer does not require as much space as frog transfer. We have Eclipse aquariums, and thus far there have been no unfortunate frog escapes from them. The only holes in the Eclipse system are one for the power cords, a little crack between the two parts of the cover, and the feeding door. I keep bricks on top of the feeding doors [to weigh them down] just in case.

African clawed frogs need either purified water (Grow-a-Frog has crystals for this, and I'm sure other groups sell equivalent purification methods) or natural spring water (check on the bottle or jug to be sure the source is listed). Additives in some people's water are bad for frogs--metal ions are toxic to the frogs.

There's a lot of debate as to how much water African clawed frogs need. Some people say 10 gallons per frog; some say two liters per frog; Grow-a-Frog's aquariums are probably smaller than that, while a lot of individuals with African clawed frogs give single frogs up to 50 gallons of free rein. The important thing is to make sure that the frog has room to swim and isn't too cramped.

Bottom-of-aquarium material is another debated topic. It has been said that your frog will need something too big to swallow (like large gravel) or small enough to fully digest (like sand) to line an aquarium. It's a good theory, but it doesn't work out so well in practice. Food can fall through gravel, rendering it inaccessible to frogs so that it a) doesn't serve its intended purpose and b) clouds the water. Sand, on the other hand, does get stuck in frogs' digestive systems, as revealed when I took my frog to the vet and got an X-ray because she had a lump in her belly. I removed sand from the tank as soon as the vet said it was a problem (in May 2003); as of December 2004, sand still occasionally appears in the aquarium. The stuff can get really stuck in a frog, which is a problem if it piles up. If you need another reason not to use sand, here's one that's a little less disturbing than the aforementioned digestive issue: once when I purchased sand from Grow-a-Frog and put it in an aquarium, it turned the water blue. I doubt the dye in the sand is toxic, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Right now I have nothing lining my tanks, and the frogs don't seem excessively troubled by the loss of their sand. I, meanwhile, am comforted by the knowledge that they can't choke on pebbles, starve from food loss, get sick from old dissolved food, or fill up on sand till stomach content becomes a life-threatening issue.

Obviously--since they escape so much--African clawed frogs are capable of living for a short time out of water. One website I looked at advocated giving them artificial lily pads to sit on. I think this is a great idea in theory, but any "land" you provide might give your frog more leverage to push against anything preventing escape. The frogs can survive in a purely aquatic environment, as long as air is available.

If your frog does escape and disappear, start searching IMMEDIATELY. Some African clawed frogs have escaped and survived without water for as long as two or three days, but the experience has been extremely bad for their health. One person described a frog's fingers falling off; another described the webs between a frog's toes coming apart. Try not to panic, but do be concerned. If you can't find the frog right away, leave out dishes of water for the frog to find. African clawed frogs are daredevils, but they do understand that they need to find water when they get dried out. People who have dog dishes sometimes find their missing frogs there.

Once you've found your frog, you need to assess his or her condition in order to decide how to care for him or her. If the journey into the outside world was not a long one, the frog is probably fine. Sending him/her to his/her aquarium and giving him/her a stern talking to is probably the best course of action in this case. If the journey was longer, you need to be gentler. Sometimes frogs are not capable of going to the surface to get air after they've been out of the water for too long; in this case, a shallow bowl of water will restore the frog's moisture level and still allow him/her to breathe. I have heard that peroxide and/or saline (2 tsp. salt to a gallon of water) will help heal wounds and prevent infection.

When a frog's health has been compromised by a trip out of the aquarium, (s)he may appear to be dead. Don't jump to conclusions--one guy told the story of how he thought his frog was dead for a long time, then saw its nostrils move. Assume the frog is alive (and go with the bowl treatment) unless/until you're sure.

Before you get a frog, you might want to check to be sure they're legal in your state/location. Anyone who's selling African clawed frogs ought to know whether you're allowed to have one, but you should check around to be sure. Some states in the U.S. have banned African clawed frogs because people who had the frogs as pets set them free, and the African clawed frogs started kicking native species out of the ecosystem. On a preachy note--don't set your frogs free in the wild; it's irresponsible for a number of reasons. . .and just plain mean.

Grow-a-Frog sells special tadpole food--actually, they have a whole tadpole kit. Grow-a-Frog's number is (352)544-0333, in case anyone's interested. NASCO has frog brittle powder for tadpoles and frog brittle for larger frogs. Grow-a-Frog also has food for adult frogs, and so do some pet stores. Grow-a-Frog says you're not supposed to feed frogs fish food, but I can't guarantee that it would hurt anything. Other good froggy foods include shrimp (rinsed--and cut up, if the pieces are too big for your frog to handle), flies, worms (also rinsed, also cut up if necessary), and beef heart (also rinsed, also cut up if necessary).

Young African clawed frogs (froglets) are somewhat transparent. When they get older, they develop more color and you can no longer see through their skin (except possibly in the case of albinos; I haven't had any of those and so haven't studied them at length)--at least, not any more than you can see through human skin. A lot of people who have clawed frog sites refer to their frogs as being "green". None of my frogs have shown any sign of being green. When Dactyl & Ghost (my only X. laevis frogs who made it to adulthood) grew up, they both became a patterned brown on their backs and white on their bellies; Bernard is even darker--a dark brown on top and a grayish shade underneath. For that matter, I haven't seen any African clawed frogs in person whose skin looked green to me--but maybe that's just me.

Speaking of skin--African clawed frogs can shed their skin and then eat it. This is normal, if sometimes spastic.

Adult male African clawed frogs (x. laevis, anyway) sing. Females do not. Males also have black padding on the insides of their arms--it looks like somebody drew them on with an old Sharpie. Females have noticeable cloacas (there are descriptions of these on several sites), but I think those take longer to develop than other signs of sex. Supposedly (and I don't have any reason to doubt this), the frogs will eat their own eggs if you let them--so you probably don't have to worry about cleanup if they mate successfully. If you do want the eggs to have a chance to become tadpoles, you need to isolate them from the adults. Other information on African clawed frogs is available from a number of great websites.