Tadpoles - the wriggly kind

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summerdays

Cycling in the sun
Location
Bristol
My son persuaded my mum to hand over some tadpoles from her pond... they have now hatched and are swimming happily in their bucket ... and I've tried feeding them spinach from something I found on the web, but I'm not convinced they are eating it. Any other suggestions of what to feed them?

Or any other care instructions ... I've given them some rocks to swim around and hide under, its in the shade so that it doesn't overheat and I'm using either rain water or water that has sat around for a week or more to keep them topped up.
 

Sambu

Active Member
Location
E.yorks
Meat!!! they dont want spinach they want steak! when i was litle i dropped little bits of mince in the bucket. if you've got a pond or water but try sieving out some of the little fly lava maybe?
 
OP
OP
summerdays

summerdays

Cycling in the sun
Location
Bristol
Sambu said:
Meat!!! they dont want spinach they want steak! when i was litle i dropped little bits of mince in the bucket. if you've got a pond or water but try sieving out some of the little fly lava maybe?

Seriously they like mince? ... cos we have bought some for our tea tonight... lasagne I think.
 
You are both right....

At the early stages they are vegetarian, but then become carnivorous.

At school we used to breed them as part of a conservation project and repopulate areas.

We used to feed them fish food and then cultivated the mis-named Water Fleas (Daphnia) for them to feed upon. Cultured in Tupperware dishes (Mother wasn't impressed) and then pour into your tadpole colony
 
More fun breeding your own......

Mind you I did have one traumatic experience when the bucket or tadpoles was used to mix cement by our builders!
 

kendalcottages

New Member
We have some in a container ourselves at the moment. They cam with all sorts of weed, etc. which gradually vanished. We returned to the pond for more weed and that seems to have done the trick so far.
 

biggs682

Touch it up and ride it
Location
Northamptonshire
havent seen any yet , always have to go and catch some every year , and name them after whatever characters are in favour with my daughter , last years were all harry potter people this year who knows
 

darkstar

New Member
Our ponds are absolutely full of frogspawn at the moment, so much so my dad had to take some out (put them into a neighbors pond)
 

Davidc

Guru
Location
Somerset UK
From what I remember they are vegetarian (pond weed or any old junk) until they start to grow legs, need both meat and veg for a while, then go completely carniverous when their tails start to be reabsorbed by their bodies.

You also need to make sure that once the gills (feathery things either side of their heads) start to disappear they have something to stand on so they can breathe air.

You should end up with loads turning into froglets, provided you keep the birds from eating them, at which time they need to be put back in the wild, at a pond or similar. The survival rate to that stage should be much higher than they would have left to their own devices.
 
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