My Tadpoles are dying!

[TheBreastmilksOnMe]

Help! They have reached the stage where they have got 4 legs, they are yet to lose their tails. They are kept in a glass bowl with a rock that is semi-submerged, I feed them boiled lettuce as recommended by a tadpole website, change the water every few days and add the di-chlorinating drops to the water every time I change it.

What am I doing wrong?

They have been going great up until this week, they have stopped eating the boiled lettuce and are dying one by one.

Help!

do they have a age limit?

Not sure what you mean confusedmummie? I thought that they developed into frogs then I could let them go into a relatives pond. They seem to be giving up and not eating though.

they always do when in a tank.

some will grow into little froggies but like in the wild most will die.

But why??? they are my little babies and I've invested so much effort lovingly boiling organic lettuce for them, buying expensive (well £3) special drops for them and making sure their water reaches room tempreture before dropping them into it. I had 12 and now I only have 5. DS will be devastated.

My track record for pets is pretty poor I must admit. Thank god I'm better at child rearing.

all 4 of our died

the kids loved them too

i ment by was it there time to turn into frogs some 'develop' to quickly apparently and die you been doing the right thing but like EGb said its sort of like a 50/50 chance they live or die

Apparently some take ages to develop and some take a matter of weeks depending on the species. I feel better I'm not the only tadpole slayer here although sorry to hear others have had a hard time with them. Next year I'll stick with taking the kids to nature instead of bringing nature to the kids.

Are you feeding them meat?

Tadpoles are vegetarian but frogs are carnivorous. Once tadpoles get their legs they need meat and won't eat plant matter anymore.

Really? What sort of meat?

I was advised to feed mine little bits of mince when they had grown their legs. Cant remember now if it was successful or not as I stopped trying to 'grow' froggies given the death rate .

this site says fish or catfood, tbh I can't remember it was so long ago, but I do remember the trauma of the meat/plant ratio for a child!

My father used to distribute frogspawn outside my primary school along with a leaflet about their upkeep. He was a bit of a local celebrity at the time and appeared on Look North more than once.

Childhood trauma of frogspawn eating accusations aside, you need to give the tadpoles some meat once their legs appear as they will start eating each other's tails if you do not.

If you get even one baby frog at the end you have done really well.

Thanks, I don't have any of those meats and I'm not going to be able to get them before tomorrow so I'm afraid we're going to have to chalk it up to experience and be better prepared next time!

btw, I used to give mine porridge oats and peas. I've never boiled lettuce for them.

this australian site has loads of info

Ours are slow growers. Does that mean they have more of a chance?? (if DC2 stops "feeding the taddypoles buttercups ) No idea the survival rate was so poor. Ours are outside in a makeshift pond which I thought gave them a better chance

BTW - where do they get their "meat" from in the wild (assuming they don't have access to Sainsbo's value mince ) Flies?? Cannot believe I have got involved in all this - already have children and various other pets. Tis all the blardy CM's fault for sending them home with the DC.

They are little frogs now,even with tails,and would normally be out of the pond and eating insects.They are starving! time to let them go outside I think.We let ours go last year just as they grew the back legs.

They do need meat once they've got legs. They need a high protein diet at this stage so they have enough reserves to get them through the time when when they stop eating to metamorphose. This is likely to be the problem for yours. You mustn't put too much food in though or the water will turn foul.

They also need lots and lots of places to climb out of the water. Not just one rock half submerged, but lots of weed and climbing out places everywhere. The weaker they are (from incorrect feeding) the more places to climb out they need as they have less energy to waste swimming about and trying to scrabble out in unsuitable places (the vertical tank sides for example).

Once they are little froglets they like live food. I feed mine aphids & they seem to thrive.

If you treat them right you can get excellent success rates - you don't have to assume they will all die bar one or two. I raised more than 60 this year with only one casualty.

Oh, wow Snorkie, that is amazing.

I always thought the survival rate was 1 in 200 or something awful like that .

Tie a little piece of chicken or ham onto some cotton and dangle it in the water. Change it every day. Ours went yum yum yum!

fishflakes aren't supposed to be high enough protein (but better than lettuce!). I give mine turtle food or ant eggs at the large tadpole stage and they usually have a bit of a scrum over it. In the wild I imagine they eat all the creepy insecty things that inhabit ponds. As soon as they have 4 legs I lie branches of aphid covered plants across the surface which they happily climb on and eat the aphids. This year it was green or whitefly covered sage stalks, last year I used basil from the kitchen windowsill - anything that has blackfly/greenfly/whitefly & no pestcides really. With that you can keep them as tail-less little frogs for a short while, but they do start climbing the sides of the tank in earnest as the 'must leave the pond' instinct kicks in and that's when it's best to let them go.

bibbity, the survival rate in the wild is very low, but with no predators in captivity if you get things right it can be very good.

I say there was only one casualty - there may have been a few more that we didn't observe, but not many I don't think as you do usually get a corpse unless they are at the very hungry carniverous stage. I should also add that we do tadpoles every year & this year was unusually successful.

and one more interesting factoid: if the chemical balance in the water isn't right (too much or too little of some chemical or other - maybe iodine, but I forget) then the tadpoles change to frogs really, really slowly or even not at all. Not sure how you test for or correct this though.

Agree with snorkie I fed mine green fly from a tree outside last year and they grew into wee frogs. I gave mine to P5 allotment this year so they have a lovely home now, must check up on them actually!