Had him since June, normally a solid bright green. For the past week he has been going a dull brownish purple during the day and greening up again at night when he starts moving around.
He is eating crickets, climbing, nothing obviously wrong. The flat has got cold since the heating went off and I have never owned a hygrometer. Is this colour change a normal thing frogs do, or is it the room?
Both, probably, and the pattern you described is the reassuring one. White's shift between green, brown and purplish tones, they darken when they are cooler, and they are nocturnal so a resting frog in the daytime is often darker than the same frog at midnight. Yours is going green again when he wakes up, which is the whole answer.
The cold flat is still worth fixing. Darkening with temperature is normal; sitting dark for days because the enclosure never gets warm enough is the version that becomes stress.
Buying a hygrometer tonight. Is there anything else I should be measuring while I am at it?
A digital thermometer at both ends so you have an actual gradient rather than one number, and look at the water dish. Chlorinated tap water in the soak dish is a common and invisible stressor, so dechlorinate it and change it often.
Handling darkens them too. Their skin is not built for our hands, so keep it to when you must.
What would turn this into an appointment: going properly lethargic or stopping climbing, refusing food, red or pink colouring on the belly or legs which can point at a bacterial infection, patches or lesions or odd skin texture, shedding far more than normal, bloating, or sitting in the water constantly.
Amphibian problems can move fast, which is the reason to know that list rather than to worry about a frog who is brown at lunchtime and green at midnight.
@minimal_handling · 6d ago
Two other normal causes before anybody panics. Background and light: they shift tone toward their surroundings, so a dark background and brown branches make a frog look darker than he is. And just before a shed the skin dulls, and since they generally eat the shed you often never see the evidence.
The stress list is where I would look if he stayed dark around the clock: temperature wrong either way, humidity too low, too much handling, bright light with nowhere to hide.
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