Having tried to bring my frogs in previous winters with disasterous results, I have decieded to try using a pond deicer this year to save this years hatchlings. I saw the link on Robyn's page to the deicer she uses. I think 1250 watts may be much more than I need for my 150 gallon pond. Any recommendations for deicers using less wattage, from anyone out there-including Robyn from anyone who has tried this on a pond approx 150 gallons in a cold climate? I live in New York where the winter's get quite cold- sometimes 10 or 20 below zero. Also, the de-icers I have looked at in the stores all have fairly short cords 10 to 15 feet long. my pond is 16 feet from the house. The instructions all say extension cords cannot be used. Any advice/experience with this? :huh:

I use that 1250 W de-icer in my 153 gallon pond in Zone 6/7 so I don't think it's too much for your pond. My 153 gallon pond rarely freezes more than half the surface because of the de-icer. The Luft pump air stone alone can keep that pond open most of the time but isn't enough for the worst weather. I don't have much confidence in the smaller de-icers out there but you can certainly try one.

As for how to deal with the longer distance to the outlet, this is what I do. When my 153 gallon's outlet dies (which has happened many times), I run an outdoor extension cord to what I need to plug in. I cover that juncture with a ziploc bag and try to elevate it a bit. I was just looking at the catalog from http://www.whateverworks.com last night and saw this plastic juncture they have to join two electrical cords outside and keep the connection secure and dry. I went to their site and couldn't find it at first but then I did. Here it is:

http://www.whateverworks.com/itemdy00.asp?...onnect&PageNo=1

Uh oh.... what was disasterous about bringing in your frogs overwinter? I am thinking of overwintering my frogs in a large tub in our unheated sunporch. I already have a half-whiskey barrel type of tub set up and am wondering when it would be safe to start the frog round up. I don't want to wait too long and go on a frog hunt, in freezing cold water while it is snowing out. I just don't think our little pond is deep enough to safely overwinter the frogs without it freezing over. Last year the tadpoles were wood frogs and they all ran away and I didn't have to worry about overwintering anything. I have a digital thermometer and have been checking the water temps outside and in the tub and so far they have been pretty close..... don't know what is going to happen this winter. And if it warms up too much and the frogs start to misbehave, I will toss in some ice cubes to keep them chilled. LOL

Yeah, I didn't ask either. What happened when you tried to overwinter the frogs inside? Did you keep them warm and active or cool and hibernating?

Nessie, I would wait until the frogs have gone to the bottom of the pond to hibernate to move them. They are easy to catch then. If it's at all warm, they will be up and hopping around and harder to find and catch. What temperature is the sun porch in winter? How many frogs do you think you have? How many gallons is the whiskey barrel?

OK, I am new at this but I though that frogs would just come out of the pond and hide in rocks when it got cold. I have rocks that line my pond and am hoping that they use them for hibernating. Frogs need air to breath don't they?

Well, the sun porch is unheated and it is probably only a few degrees warmer than what the actual outside temperature is. Right now it is 49 outside and 55 in the sun porch. The half-whiskey barrel is about 25 gallons but I didn't fill the tub all the way to the top. If the tub appears to be getting too cold or in danger of freezing over with ice, it can always be moved into the basement.

I know there are at least 5 green frogs left out of 9. If there were any other baby frogs I would think they would all be about the same size as the others that were rescued when the puddle they were in dried up. The last time all 9 were seen at one time was the end of July. If the frogs are active I am guessing they wouldn't be too hard to catch, I would only have to shake their cricket jar and toss one in and probably get at least three of them in one scoop of the net. Now if it would only be that easy when you actually want to catch the little buggers LOL!!!!

My last tadpole overwintered into a frog and did fine over the winter in an aquarium, but this year I want all of them to hibernate.

A couple of you wanted to know what went wrong when I brought my frogs inside in the past. First of all. These were green frogs- aquatic frogs. So, they needed to either hibernate in very cold water, or be kept awake, and fed in an aquatic environment. I decided to try to support them in an aquatic environment, becuase I didn't think I had a suitable area with the correct tempurature-except for my refigerator, and I didn't want to use this option. I used a 20 gallon long glass aquarium, filled about 5 inches deep with water treated to remove chlorine, with several long stones at one end from their pond for an island. I bought a filter/pump specially designed for this type of set up which can be submerged and turned sideways, so the spray could be directed up as a small fountain or sideways through the water. All went well for 4 months while I fed the earthworms I dug up from my garden(a favorite food). One day I went to feed them and all 5 frog were dead I was heartbroken, because they had become used to taking food from my hand. I decieded either the pump wiring was defective and shorted out. ( a couple times I had found the pump off and unplugging it and plugging it back in started it back up again) , or the worms had gone bad. 3 days before this happened, the weather turned cold, so I dug up extra worms and put them in a plastic sour cream container I had washed out. Later, after this incident. I read that frogs should not be fed worms bought from bait stores, even though the worms look healthy because bacteria grow in them when kept in captivity. So there you go.

Robyn, how much do you estimate the deicer adds to your electric bill?

I don't know how much money the de-icers costs (I run two). My father pays the electric bill but I know our bill is much higher than most people's mostly because we have two electric heat pumps/air conditioners runnning quite a lot (as well as 4 fish and 3 reptile aquariums, most with pumps, heaters, and lighting but don't tell him that, or I'll have to get rid of them!).

Some frogs overwinter on land (tree frogs, wood frogs, leopard frogs, etc.) while others overwinter under water (green frogs, bullfrogs, pickerel frogs, etc.). Those that overwinter under water will come up for air on warm days and can absorb oxygen directly from the water while hibernating. If the bottom of the pond is low in oxygen due to a lot of rotting leaves, plants, dead animals, etc., then the frogs can suffocate over the winter. Those things also release methane and hydrogen sulfide (which stinks) which are toxic as they decompose. Plus, if the pond is sealed over in ice too long, that further lowers the exchange of gases (oxygen in, carbon dioxide, methane, and hydrogen sulfide out). Before I started putting an air stone in my 153 gallon over winter, I would find a mass of dead frogs in the bottom in the spring.

I've fed bait night crawlers (earth worms) to the baby snapping turtle I had, and he was fine. I don't know how true it is that they're not safe to feed. I do know that if they "go bad," they really stink! Feeding dying earthworms could certainly harm frogs.

The sudden mass death of a bunch of frogs that seemed to be fine sounds more like electrocution or poisoning than a bad meal. Did they all eat the earthworms that you think were bad? If you ever want to try again, I suggest feeding crickets and mealworms. I've been feeding those to my reptiles without problems (not the frogs though).

I am very very sorry to hear about the loss of your frogs. :( I only asked about your experience so that I could try and prevent the same thing from happening when I try to overwinter my pond frogs this year. I really hope that you can find a good de-icer that works. I thought about using a de-icer but I didn't know how well it would work in January in northern Michigan. Not to mention that I don't think the wiring in our house could handle running one all winter.

Unfortunately,I think you are correct about electrocution being the cause. All the frogs were in the same position with their legs and arms pointing towards thier toes. This year, I have one adult and 4 young frogs that grew from tadpoles, as well as several large tadpoles that did not metamorphasize this summer. I hope to keep them safely in my pond this winter. By the way my comet goldfish do not seem to care that my pond has frozen over with them in it the past three years. They have been perfectly fine every Spring. The first time this happened was an "accident" I thought we had caught all the goldfish to bring in for Fall. In the Spring, we discovered 2 black goldfish had been left behind over the winter, and they were fine. They had even grown quite a bit! FYI:These 2 fish were 1/2 comet and 1/2 black moor.