Thursday continued the excellent spell of weather we've been having over the last few days. It was a bit of a chilly start to the day but during the afternoon Thursday became the new warmest day of the year with a temperature of 20.2°C (68.4°F).
You may remember that our first frogs were so eager to spawn that they didn't manage to make it to the pond instead depositing a clump of frogspawn in a plant saucer. At the time I was unsure what to do with this clump. It was left in its saucer for a couple of days while we pondered what to do. Before we’d decided we noticed that the frogs had produced more frogspawn but this time at least they’d managed to get it in the pond.
I felt a little bit less concerned about that first attempt. I found an old plastic fish bowl sort of container and thought I’d pour the frogspawn into it and add some pond water. I planned to leave the container in the shade so that the tadpoles didn't get poached or boiled.
Well so far my little container has worked well, perhaps a little too well and we have dozens of tadpoles swimming around in the bowl of water. I’m guessing that the water in the bowl is warmer than the pond where the development of the spawn into tadpoles is going on at a much slower pace. Our fish don’t seem to have found a route through the weed to the spawn so maybe there is a chance of some surviving in the pond.
I’m now trying to decide the best way to look after out tadpole bowl. I’ll keep exchanging some of the water in the bowl for some pond water in an effort to stop the water going stagnant. The question is what should I feed the tadpoles on? At this stage I’m going to try to sprinkle in some finely ground up fish flake and see how they do. I don’t suppose we've any chance of rearing vegetarian tadpoles so when the little creatures start forming their back legs we’ll have to change their diet as they change form vegetarian to carnivorous creatures. Cat food is one suggestion I've seen on the Internet but the quantities have to be kept very small or the water gets polluted. Too little food and they start eating one another which I’d like to avoid at all costs.
There’s a short video below showing our tadpoles in their bowl and frogspawn still developing in the pond.
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Clever tadpoles - vocal while still so immature ! Coming on well though in the warmth.
ReplyDeleteThey might get quieter as they mature!
DeleteI remember years ago being told to feed tadpoles on defrosted frozen peas and I know that I did they all came on well. As to feeding them as they get a little older, is the mud in the bottom of your pond, if so this should contain animal matter of some sort for them to feed on.
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