A friend gave me a bowl of frog eggs attached to some kind of oxygenating plant (Myriophyllum sp., aka milfoil?), duckweed, and a couple of small snails from her barrel pond on 05/21/11. Within a week 2 tadpoles hatched. They were very tiny and extremely good at hiding. I was worried the others wouldn't hatch, but when I shook the bowl, they wiggled inside their egg cluster.
The day after I took the photos above, I transferred the pond water to a 5 gallon aquarium where I had water sitting out a few days to allow the chlorine to dissipate. The agitation from the transfer released the remaining tadpoles from their sacs. There were other miniscule organisms swimming around in the water that I could only see in the sunlight. The aquarium turned green with algae fairly quickly. I siphoned off some of the water and refilled with fresh water. Turns out this may not have been necessary, because as the tadpoles get larger and the duckweed spread to cover almost the entire surface, the water has become clearer on its own.
It's been fun watching the tadpoles grow. By 06/10/11, they already started looking "pregnant" with big round bellies and could no longer cling to the side of the aquarium. Quite honestly, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with these frogs once they metamorphose. My friend collected tadpoles from a pond in Seaside last year and added them to her existing barrel pond here in Pacific Grove. By the first of April, she witnessed 3 sets of frogs mating. She made a video for the sound recording; click here to listen to how loud they are.
ps 07/11/11 - The oxygenating plant the eggs were attached to is rigid hornwort (Ceratophyllum demersum). While this greenery is good for aquaria and is found worldwide, it is not necessarily beneficial out in the wild.
The day after I took the photos above, I transferred the pond water to a 5 gallon aquarium where I had water sitting out a few days to allow the chlorine to dissipate. The agitation from the transfer released the remaining tadpoles from their sacs. There were other miniscule organisms swimming around in the water that I could only see in the sunlight. The aquarium turned green with algae fairly quickly. I siphoned off some of the water and refilled with fresh water. Turns out this may not have been necessary, because as the tadpoles get larger and the duckweed spread to cover almost the entire surface, the water has become clearer on its own.
It's been fun watching the tadpoles grow. By 06/10/11, they already started looking "pregnant" with big round bellies and could no longer cling to the side of the aquarium. Quite honestly, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with these frogs once they metamorphose. My friend collected tadpoles from a pond in Seaside last year and added them to her existing barrel pond here in Pacific Grove. By the first of April, she witnessed 3 sets of frogs mating. She made a video for the sound recording; click here to listen to how loud they are.
ps 07/11/11 - The oxygenating plant the eggs were attached to is rigid hornwort (Ceratophyllum demersum). While this greenery is good for aquaria and is found worldwide, it is not necessarily beneficial out in the wild.
3 comments:
I looked in my barrel pond today and the water has cleared up quite a bit. I was surprised to find that there were still so many tadpoles! I thought the raccoon had gotten most of them, but that is not the case! Then as I looked closer, I suddenly noticed two tiny tiny little froggies nestled in the water hyacinth! They were so cute, so small, and obviously infants!
See you Thursday!
I removed several sets of mosquito eggs today and left the snail eggs alone. Were the frogs you found on the hyacinth smaller than the ones you saw mating at the beginning of April?
They were WAY smaller! They definitely grow over time. The new ones were like the size of a nickel! I took a couple of photos, I will send them to you.
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