How Long Can African Dwarf Frogs Hold Their Breath

Last Updated on April 6, 2022 by cmoarz

How long can African dwarf frogs live out of water

African Dwarf Frogs are extremely sensitive to conditions outside of the water. They are an entirely aquatic species of frog, and can only survive outside of the water for as much as 20 minutes at a time. This number is cut in half if the environment is low in humidity.

In a low humidity warm environment, these frogs are as good as doomed if they come out of the water.

How often do African dwarf frogs come up for air?

With that said, African dwarf frog breathing air is still necessary! How cruel. These poor buggers have lungs, and they can only stay fully submerged for 15 minutes at a time before needing to come up for air. So do African dwarf frogs need oxygen? Yes!

Luckily, they don’t need to leave the water and just poke their heads out to take a breath. This number can change slightly depending on the size of the frog, as a bigger frog has a bigger set of lungs.

It’s important to keep the first paragraph of this article in mind. Just because these little frogs can breathe air and have lungs, doesn’t mean they are land creatures.

Given their extremely sensitive nature, it’s not advised to take them out of the tank at all. However, if you must, you should limit the time out of the tank to 5-10 minutes at a time, and do it as rarely as possible.

This is the same reason the tank should not have any sort of protruding decorations the frogs could climb on, or get stuck on.

These guys aren’t very smart and could end up killing themselves by accident. It’s like giving a toddler a gun. Just better not to give them the ability to accidentally kill themselves.

With all that in mind, You should also make sure they are able to get a clear shot to the surface of the water without any obstacles. Your frogs can drown if you make it too hard to get to the surface, either by strangling the tank with too many plants or having too many decorations hindering their movement. It’s really one of those better safe than sorry situations, Although these frogs do love a planted tank. Just be responsible for the overgrowth.

How long can a frog hold its breath?

Most frogs can hold their breath for an average of 5 to 7 hours, but for the African dwarf frog, it’s not so easy, and need to come up every 15 minutes or so.