In December (7mos ago) my son brought home tadpoles from the park. He found them in the run off from the sprinkler water collected in a concrete ditch that drains to the ocean (about a mile away) here in Capo Beach. As a homeschool family we have done this many times from a different park and have had 100% textbook success. We keep the frogs until the they are eating me out of house and home and then return them back to where we collected them as tadpoles. Beautiful!!
Not this time. Oh my, these tadpoles are STILL tadpoles. Or are they even tadpoles? They are not colored or marked as the previous specimens. However they looked like tadpoles. We collected them here by the house at a different park. I have read that some frogs take up to 22 mos to turn into a frog. Okay, I can wait for that IF theses are really going to be frogs. We discovered this morning we have babies!! Uh-hum.......isnt that the frogs job? I have never heard of tadpoles laying eggs? They are miniature versions of their parents. Cute lil' things.
I have been careful to keep the algae growing in there plastic container and I remove large amounts of it when it gets to overgrown never taking out what is growing on the sides. I know what tadpole eggs look like and as often as I gaze at these little gems have not seen any clusters of eggs floating or clumped to a corner? A few of the 7mo old tads are really taking on the head shape of a frog but their spines are a bit curved like they want to burst out of there. No legs or nubs in site. And a couple of the 7 mo tads haven't changed in size at all? These new babies are a bit larger than the size of an egg. Not shy at all, they are all over the place. Only 5 newbies to the gang totaling 10 in all.
They are doing fine on goldfish food and their algae. I usually do the blood worms when I see nubs for legs starting. Unfortunately, we haven't gotten there yet :(
Help! I need any and all advise. What are these creatures????? Any thoughts?
Can you post some photos? You can e-mail them to me at help at fishpondinfo dot com if you can't post them on-line (and then link to them here) so I can tell you if they are tadpoles.
Tadpoles cannot reproduce. If the little ones you are seeing are definitely the same kind of animal, then you don't have tadpoles unless someone put some more in there.
Bullfrog tadpoles can take two years to turn into adults. Green frogs take one year. Most tree frogs take just two or three months.
I'm not sure what they might be which is why I asked for the photos. I could guess but I'd probably be wrong (salamanders? strange fish?).