Frogspawn in pond!

[AllesAusLiebe]

Hi everyone,

DH installed a small pond a couple of years ago and today I noticed that we have some frogspawn!

Please does anyone have any tips or advice as to how I can keep our new residents happy?

DH has done nothing with the pond aside from put a couple of rocks in to allow any frogs to climb out. It looks like it's down to me to undertake the maintenance. . . I'm guessing I should put some aquatic plants in there, but I'm not sure what kind.

It's a very small pond, maybe a metre and a half square.

Thanks in advance!

That's going to get noisy!
I can't help with advice but I loved reading your post. We used to have frogs in my junior school pond and I still love them.

We get frog spawn most years in our uncared for pond that sometimes looks a bit green . I dont do anything extra tbh. I have to top it up at the moment though as there seems to be a leak but we cant drain it as we have tadpoles just now and dont want to kill them

It's worth putting some pond plants in, ideally native ones, nothing too vigorous, partly to encourage wildlife and create a healthier environment and partly just because it will look nicer!

You also need some plants for cover around at least part of the pond and places for frogs to hide.

BaronessBomburst haha thanks! I'm by far the most excited out of all of us, as it reminds me of being a kid, too!

dementedpixie that's good to know thanks. Hopefully DH's philosophy of letting nature take over will make these little guys last! Please can I ask if you have any plants in there?

Thanks HardAsSnails! I've just been out to put some 1small rocks around the outside and I've ordered some wildflowers. Hope this will provide some shelter for them! Do you think I'm better off getting some pond plants for the surface, or would it be ok to plant them? I'm just concerned about disturbing the frogspawn.

Thanks again for the replies!

We get frogspawn in my parents pond every year, it nearly always gets eaten by some animal though. We have no fish in the pond

We get frogspawn in my parents pond every year, it nearly always gets eaten by some animal though

I’m fairly sure newts eat frogspawn.
We have loads of newts in our pond.
And no frogs

Female frogs will lay spawn whetehr or not there's a male frog around to fertilise it (fertilisation takes place externally).

What should happen over the next few days, of the spawn has been fertilised, is that the little black blob in the centre of each egg will begin to elongate. The eggs will start to go a bit yucky and start to disintegrate, and the tadpoles will spend the first few days feeding on the egg remains. Then they'll move on to eating green slime and other soft plant matter.

These are our wee frogs from last year

The newts are definitely eating ours!

We've got a 'new' pond, created last autumn to replace a much smaller pond, and waited until the tadpoles had hatched to plant it up.

At a minimum I'd put a small bunch of oxygenator in now.

We move the frogspawn into a bucket which we then put back into the pond so that the top of the bucket is above the pond level. Then once the tadpoles hatch we tip the bucket's contents back in. Doing this stops the newts eating the frogspawn and keeping the bucket submerged stops it getting too hot or cold. Seems to work for us - we have at least a dozen newts and frogs in there. Plus loads of tadpoles of course

Ours were left alone as spawn, it's only in the last couple of weeks we've seen the tadpole numbers drop and spotted the newts!

Aww thanks everyone but there's now no sign of life in my pond. . .

Can't see any newts, but there have been a couple of wood pigeons sniffing around there during the day so they're my number one suspects. Just put some damn plants in yesterday and everything so I'm feeling pretty cheated!

Could they have hatched and are now hiding? They can start off really tiny

Don't give up hope. Frog tadpoles know they are good to eat, so their first act is to disappear into hiding (unlike toad tadpole, which taste foul, and swim around bold as brass in big shoals).

Can you see any frogspawn in your pond? If not, that's a good sign. It means the taddies have hatched.

Hi everyone, good news! Saw some little tadpoles yesterday!

They really are tiny (I don't know what I expected. . . ! 😂) and there's quite a few of them so fingers crossed that some make it to adulthood (or froghood).

Trying to get my 18 month old DS interested in them is proving fruitless, however. He couldn't care less! Luckily enough I'm such a big kid. 😂

Ah, he's too young. 4-10 are the great years for kids being interested in things - you have a wonderful time to come.

Our frogspawn disappeared this year, suspect seagulls :( .
Usually appears early March here, South East, and lovely to watch the tadpoles evolve and then spot them in and around the pond. I do add some dried cat food to the pond (read somewhere about feeding them cat food ?) but probably not necessary. Enjoy them, as we never tire of watching them :)