Sunday 23 May 2010

From tadpole to frog


Three weeks ago I was given 38 tadpoles from a friend's pond. I took them into school for the children to watch them grow, but soon fell in love with these creatures and decided to keep some at home for me and Little-N to enjoy.
I put them in a fish tank with some pretty stones on the bottom and it was wonderful to watch them swim about.
Much to my surprise, they changed so quickly growing their back legs within a week of having them. In the photo above you can see a tadpole resting on the rocks with tiny hind legs.
I put in quite a few rocks for them to climb on. Cleaning the tank took ages.
Soon they grew their front legs too and we got so excited. I didn't really know what to do once they turn into frogs, so I kept them in a water filled tank with rocks, but sadly I found two frogs drowned when I returned from work. I removed all the tadpoles from the fish tank, placed them in a plastic tub and turned the fish tank into a terrarium with bark, rocks, branches and a bowl of water. I moved all the froglets with front legs into the water bowl in terrarium.
The froglet's tails disappeared quickly. The children at school collected aphids to feed them.
Soon their tails disappeared completely and they started climbing the walls of the tank. I think they're common British frogs.

Their so interesting to watch. At the moment we have 18 frogs/froglets in the terrarium and 7 tadpoles still changing in the tub. We have ten other tadpoles in a tub at school, interestingly they haven't developed as fast. I don't plan to keep all of them, I will return most to their pond, however I'm looking into the care of frogs to see whether we can keep two of them as pets for a while.

4 comments:

Leptir (Nataša) said...

Wonderful post and great photos! Thanks for sharing :-)

Unknown said...

This looks like so much fun to observe. I do wonder why the tadpoles in the tub are growing slower? Thank you for sharing.

jo said...

what fun! I remember me and my brother collecting tadpoles when we were kids but we didn't want my mom to find them so we hid them under my brothers bed and promptly forgot about them. They were discovered weeks later after my mom pulled my brothers room apart trying to locate the awful smell - ohhh to be 6 again!
great post!
I will be linking. If you don't want to be featured please let me know.
Thanks.
Jo
The Montessori Goldmine

Mozi Esme said...

I really want to do something like this! Now if only I can find a good frog supply source... :)