First generation antibiotics usually save for human health, and have very marginal side effect. the issue you have to consider is the matter of weight, since it is given according to the body weight.

It means, side effects from using antibiotic are inevitable. I will fully consider the you advice.  Thank you!

many antibiotics are safe for frogs - but each is effective against only some pathogens. which disease are you wanting to work with? and perhaps I can make a suggestion.

Gerry Marantelli :  Thank you for contacting me. Korean believe brown frogs are healthy food for stamina. So many people manage the frog farms. Our problem is using antibiotic is harmful for human? even no effect to frogs? We are focusing on the Red leg syndrome, Rana virus and Chtridiomycosis. May i ask  you to recommend effective treatments for frogs and human who intake them. Thank you again!!

I think the difficulty will be that in a farming situation economics rule out many of the drugs and protocols we might usually use with captive frogs.

I had dealings with frog farmers in South America who focussed on preventing disease then culling or controlling once a pen got infected as more economical than pharmaceutical treatments. Your protocol should start there : control the access to the area by other vectors of disease (most likely to be frogs) and take appropriate action with water (and other at risk products if you have them) entering the facility. We control chytrid access to wild areas using frog proof fences and water filtration systems that eliminate particles down to the size of chytrid spores, alternately you may be able to heat or UV treat the water, or even pass it through a suitable storage and delay that effectively eliminates pathogenic amounts of organisms entering – you will need to consider each organisms propagules life characteristics etc but we have seen success against chytrid with even a few days of delay. See this link on our website for some images: http://frogs.org.au/corroboree/kom.html. two years later the frogs are fine, breeding and free of chytrid while the environment surrounding the fence contains chytrid infected frogs – i.e. no chytrid has breached our fence and filtration.

In our own husbandry facilities we have containment simply by confinement and hygiene protocols for staff/materials entering each room – some old images here: http://frogs.org.au/arc/container.php. we have never had a disease enter these contained areas except on frogs we have brought into these facilities. And even then we have contained and eliminated it quickly.

Where you should start is with what risks you actually have. Your location may rule out certain pathogens as either not present or not climatically suitable. Your frog species may further rule out others – or at least it will have thresholds for infection and pathogenicity that mean you do not have to eliminate all infective propagules. You may also eliminate some risk through management of frog stress and nutrition as healthy frogs are more robust. You may also be able to modify the environment in which you keep the frogs to deter or reduce the viability of disease agents – for example with salt in the water (if your frog species will tolerate it) or with hot basking areas allowing frogs to induce fever for curative purposes, or simply spend adequate time in areas unsympathetic to the disease agents

obviously most of the above will not involve medication so the risk or concern for human health is eliminated

Hope this helps – perhaps once you have more specific ideas on considering the above, I can give some more direct advice.

The point is prevent disease before infected. I agree with you. Thank you.

Another question is how can we detect pathogenic organism? We are trying to use 3M petrifilm (AC). Is it effective? what methods do your center usually use?

Amphibian disease is obviously serious problem. New we are trying to start to prepare solutions from the very beginning. So is it ok? if i contact you with many questions?

Thank you

I have no experience with the 3M petrifilm - but it appears to be only suitable for bacteria (and maybe not all, or not for specific identification?)

The problem with bacteria is all frogs are covered in them and the vast majority are non-pathogenic, so finding bacteria is not the same as finding disease – even if the one you find is a potentially pathogenic one. A good example is that several bacteria that can cause “red leg” you mentioned before are normal environmental flora – so you would expect to find them just about anywhere, but it will only be in otherwise compromised frogs that you will see these bacteria cause disease. So finding them actually means nothing unless you are dealing with a specific disease outbreak as identified by symptomatic frogs. Even then, the cause may be another pathogen allowing access to the bacterium eg. a frog with chytrid can have “red leg” or bacterial infections concurrently once skin is damaged and allows bacterial invasion.

It is worth note that “red leg” itself is not a specific disease - but a symptom common to a variety of diseases, and possibly not all even being bacterial. It is a little like saying a person has a cough – it could be a cold, Pneumonia or lung cancer all having different origins.

Also with the 3M product – it certainly does not seem to indicate any ability to identify fungi or virus, so the major threats of chytrid and rana virus would not be detected. I suggest these are far greater threats to farming than bacterial diseases that can usually be addressed with improved husbandry. Additionally prevention/culling/containment remains likely your only viable option against rana virus.

Here at ARC our focus is on prevention and good husbandry. In minor events for non-valuable animals we focus on culling sick animals and containment of disease. For major events or high value animals we conduct diagnostics and select and apply suitable treatments. We sometimes make a guess based on symptoms where diagnostics will not be rapid enough to facilitate treatment action. Treatment for pathogens should, in a well run facility, not be a common occurrence. With 9 rooms and up to 10,000 frogs of 40+ species we have had only two instances requiring pharmaceutical treatment in the last 4 years. One a single frog of very high value with a suspected bacterial sepsis treated with prescription antibiotics, and the other a group of about 200 frogs in rearing treated for a fungal infection with common aquaculture compounds. While we have known and tested treatments for many other issues we have seen over time (eg chytrid) we do not need to use them very often.

hope this is helpful