I have a pond with goldfish inside a screened lanai. When the toads were mating, we could not sleep and went out to find two of them ( in position) in the pond. The other 24, or so, were trying to get inside the screen. How the two ever got in, I'll never know. Now I have hundreds of little toads swarming around inside my lanai. Can't leave the doors open for fear they will enter the house. I can not catch them and if I use anything to get rid of them, I will kill my goldfish. Am I in trouble? Also, two weeks ago, I purchased two shubunkin gold fish ( 3 to 4 inches) and put them in the pond with all the others. Since then I had never laid eyes on them. They must have gone to the bottom and stayed there. They never came up to feed. I was looking for them to be floaters because I thought they were dead.Today I finally saw them and ( I swear to you) they were a different color than they were two weeks ago. I know all my fish and what I have. These two were a different size from the others. They were picked out for their color because I didn't have any rusty, coppery and brownish fish. Today they displayed blue, gray and orange markings. Am I losing my mind or do fish change colors when put into a pond from being in a aquarium? Please don't think that I am a nut case. Any suggestions regarding my toad problem would be appreciated. Thanks, Baffled in Florida

I'm sorry the toads are bothering you. I have a small page on deterring frogs and toads at http://www.fishpondinfo.com/frogs/frogdeter.htm
Toads only breed for a few weeks and then should move on. The toads must not have other pond sources nearby so they were desperate to get to your pond. Where there's a will, there's a way. Are the baby toads still tadpoles or are they now adult toads? If they are tadpoles, you can net them out and move them. If they are babies, you can try to catch them or leave your door to the outside open as they want to leave soon after turning into adults. Few animals want to eat toads or toad tadpoles as they taste really bad. If you leave the newly morphed toads in the screened room, they will eat bugs. Most will die off; they have a high mortality. A few will survive to eat bugs until they can escape to the great outdoors. You can use a net to coax them towards the door to the outside. They are catchable; it just takes patience.

When goldfish are put into a pond, they are scared at first and will hide. When fish die, they sink at first but usually eventually float when well rotted. Many people think their new fish have died when they're just hiding. Goldfish can change colors and do so quite often when they're small. Goldfish start out brown/gray/blah and later get various reds, whites, etc. depending on their genetics. Those colors and patterns may continue to change. Your magically color changing goldfish are perfectly typical.

I hope you can escort the toads to life outdoors. Good luck!

I delayed removing the cover from my pool until the third week of June. Now we have thousands of tadpoles in all stages of development. I can get maybe 100 or so by running the filtration system and catching them in the skimmer baskets which doesn't seem to harm them. I can also net a few (5-20 or so) at a time. the ones I catch I deposit on the edge of a little stream on my property. I have also put several boards into the water as ramps for them to walk out and raised the water level as high as possible. I can see that they want out but I don't think many go out via the ramps. A lot of the ones I catch seem able to climb right up the sides of the bucket.
Can anyone suggest ways to get them out? I don't mind waiting if they will go on their own when they're ready; I just don't want to kill them. I'm afraid they'll drown when they can no longer breathe with gills. i've found a few tiny frogs dead already.
We have lots of frogs and enjoy them a lot.
John Guthrie

The tadpoles are in the pool itself or on the pool cover? It sounds like they're in the pool itself. Do you add chlorine and other chemicals to the pool? If you do, you'll want to remove the tadpoles ASAP as the chlorine will eventually kill them at proper pool concentrations. Any adult frogs/toads will drown if not allowed a way out of the pool.

When we take our pool cover off, there are sometimes tadpoles in there. My father uses a hose to drain water off the cover so some might end up on the ground which is why I hand collected any egg masses that I found before they hatched. When the cover comes off, we pull it over, and he bails it out. I've never seen any tadpoles at that point.

You might try floating a piece of styrofoam in the middle of the pool. Any morphed frogs (or are they toads?) should climb up onto that. You can then go in and shake them off into a bucket or ever the edge of the pool. Animals never want to take the ramps to get out! Float whatever non-toxic, non-slippery, appropriate things you can think of in the pool. We have a fake lily pad that's supposed to be a place for frogs to go when they fall in the pool but nobody ever used it.

You're not going to be able to save them all but, if you get the majority, that will be good. You might consider making a small pond nearby so that next year, the frogs can lay eggs in there instead. Since I've had ponds, we have basically no amphibians using the pool cover anymore. They use the tub ponds.

I wish I could be of more help. I hope you can spare some time to go net a bunch of them.

The tadpoles are in the pool. They were under the cover. I haven't added any chemicals because I don't want to hurt them. I have always had a lot of frogs or toads, I'm afraid i don't know the difference, but never seen any tadpoles in the water. There are always a few frogs in there and the small amount of chlorine seems not to bother them. I'll try the idea of floating something, the ramps aren't doing anything. There are tadpoles of all ages in there and even some fully developed frogs (very tiny).
John

Happy frog (or toad) catching!