We had a warm, sunny day and we have a little pond and we have tadpoles - yeeess!
A mass of tadpoles have appeared on site. I don't think anyone had spotted frogspawn on the coverings over the empty plots, but it must have been there for a while. Apparently it's common for frogs (more than toads) to lay their spawn in shallow puddles. But the puddles will likely dry out before the tadpoles become froglets or, even more likely, they'll be eaten.
So my mission yesterday was to make a little pond so there's some chance of survival for some of the little wrigglers and hopefully we'll get some more frogs on site.
Surprisingly, tadpoles enjoy eating lettuce and carrot as well as algae and the occasional bit of meat (I think we'll start giving them a taste for slugs).
I propagated some houseleeks for the plant sale so put a couple of them on the stones by the pond. Also I retrieved some iris/orchid from an empty plot before it gets covered, so hopefully that will make it look a bit prettier and offer some shade for the pond dwellers. And it's in the little wildflower corner, so there should be plenty of other growth for protection when the froglets leave the water too.
So that was mostly what I was doing during our 6 hours in the sunshine. And here are Coldplay to hum along to.
A mass of tadpoles have appeared on site. I don't think anyone had spotted frogspawn on the coverings over the empty plots, but it must have been there for a while. Apparently it's common for frogs (more than toads) to lay their spawn in shallow puddles. But the puddles will likely dry out before the tadpoles become froglets or, even more likely, they'll be eaten.
I propagated some houseleeks for the plant sale so put a couple of them on the stones by the pond. Also I retrieved some iris/orchid from an empty plot before it gets covered, so hopefully that will make it look a bit prettier and offer some shade for the pond dwellers. And it's in the little wildflower corner, so there should be plenty of other growth for protection when the froglets leave the water too.
So that was mostly what I was doing during our 6 hours in the sunshine. And here are Coldplay to hum along to.
Once tadpoles grow their back legs they become carnivorous and need meat to develop properly. Usually this will be provided by bugs in the water. When we raised tadpoles in a tank we added some daphnia from the pond supplier and also tied a small piece of raw meat to a string and dangled it. Once they had finished feedng we pulled it out so that it didn't pollute the water. I'm hoping our tadpoles have 'hatched' but out pond has too many places for them to hide.
ReplyDeleteOh that is interesting, thankyou. I hope ours survive to become carnivorous
DeleteGreat to see your tadpoles. I've got loads too. I've been feeding them fish food.
ReplyDeleteWe've bought some fish food too and today put some algae-covered leaves into the pond (some would call it a bucket) which they seem to like
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