feeding tadpoles!

[shivvy]

i had frogspawn in a small pond and they turned into taddies just before easter. However, they are still tadpoles!
Is this not too long for them to be tadpoles? - should they not be sprouting a few little legs by now?
I was thinking that they maybe dont have enough food to make them grow and thought about putting fish food flakes into the pond. Any thoughts?

[hammerman]

my tadpoles at work are at various stages of development. Some are little frogs that have left the pond and others are still legless tadpoles.

I feed mine a handful of pond pellets every day and they love them.....any fish food will do though but don't over feed and pollute the pond. It might be worth changing 10% of the pond water every other day with fresh tap water.

[YvonneM]

Tadpoles need to become carnivores for them to turn into frogs. I buy liver and dangle pieces from a cane in the pond. Just watch them devour it just like little sharks

[WendyS]

None of mine have developed legs yet and I've been anxiously wondering why. I suspect there were just too many tadpoles this year and the competition for food has been too strong despite my augmenting natural algae with boiled lettuce.
Thank you Hammerman and Yvonne for your other food suggestions. I'll try them. After buying liver from our butcher for the tadpoles, and chicken scraps for the foxes it would be nice to buy some meat from him for US to eat !!

[bookermel]

You can feed taddies bloodworms to help them develop legs. This can be bought in both dried form or as little frozen cubes which you can keep in the icebox and break or cut pieces off as required. Don't feed them so much as the food decays in the water!! Most good aquatic and fish shops stock these.

[shivvy]

Thankyou all for such informative answers.
I know that alot of ABers are peeved about people hijacking answerbank to use it as a chatroom or just to be nasty and disruptive, but this is an example of how it works fantastically well.
I now have fish food and am off down the garden to give them a treat. Over the weekend I will also try them on boiled lettuce and liver - the little guys won't know whats hit them!
Thanks again to all of you.
PS - just have to ask hammerman - what job do you do that you have tadpoles at work?!

[WendyS]

shivvy - I've found that the best lettuce to use is the old fashion round butterhead variety. This has plenty of flesh on it and I boil it for about 7 minues until it has gone really limp and slimy so that the tadpoles can easily suck away the fibres. Then fish the white stems which remain out of the water to reduce water pollution. Little Gems also work OK. Iceberg is hopeless as there isn't enough green flesh on them.

[WendyS]

My soft hearted husband has just popped out to the butcher to buy 4 oz of liver. He laughed at this small quantity and asked - "What are you feeding - terrapins?"

Anyway, I've given them their first taste of it. Didn't take long for some of them to catch on, so hopefully now they'll all start growing legs and transforming. Trouble is, our garden is so scorched dry with the sun that I fear for their survival once they move out of the pond. In previous years I used to spray our small patches of ground cover with a hose to provide a moist environment for them. Another reason for ursing Thames Water for their hosepipe ban. The wildlife will really suffer if this heat continues.

[YvonneM]

Hi Wendy
glad they are enjoying their liver. We provide shelter by placing some quarry tiles (anything similar would do) in a small pile at the edge of the pond so there are gaps between this also stops the blackbirds eating them

[Kharvey1980]

how old can the tadpoles be before they can eat liver ?

[Kharvey1980]

how old can the tadpoles be before you can give them liver ?