Feed Tadpoles

[Krewella]

What should I feed tadpoles. After recent panic of finding frog spawn in the garden and not having a pond, I have dug a pond and put the spawn in and most of it hatched. I was lucky enough to be able to fill the pond with rain water from my water butts. My question now is do I have to feed the tadpoles and small frog if they develop or do they need feeding. The water is quite green already does that mean they can eat that ??

[Susie]

Can you get some pond weed from a garden centre?

Failing that, any green leafy vegetable (lettuce for example) would do the trick in the short term I think.

[Paul mabbott]

Originally Posted by Krewella

After resent panic of find the frog spawn in the garden and not having a pond. I have dug a pond and put the spawn in and most of it hatched. I was lucky enough to be able to fill the pond with rain water from my water butts. My question now is do I have to feed the tadpoles and small frog if they develop or do they need feeding. The water is quite green already does that mean they can eat that ??

Yes, at first they will eat any greenery - when mine have cleared out all the alga and pondweed, I throw in dock leaves, the outside leaves of lettuce or whatever.
However at a certain stage they will become carnivorous and will not eat any vegetation! Actually, as with most animals, they are not strictly carnivorous, rather omnivorous but needing higher protein levels so stale bread or old sandwiches are very useful. I used to find that the remnants of marmite sandwiches would send them into a feeding frenzy ....
If they don't get some supplementary protein they will, of course, eat each other .... cannibalism is a survival mechanism which is one of the reasons why frogs lay so much spawn.

[neep_neep]

Ah yes, brings back fond memories of my Grandma throwing old chicken bones into the pond

They were stripped clean pretty quickly, older tadpoles are like shoals of mini pirahnas once they find something tasty

[Krewella]

Thank you for all your advice have written it all down for future use and will be saving the sandwiches especially marmite lol

[nightshade]

Do not allow too much vegetation to accumulate and sour the water
I put a few floating Fish Pellets in as a protein supplement

[Stewy]

I feed mine Fish food (the floating pondsticks) and they go down well.

[fbcpmike]

I've heard they like fish flakes.
We used to throw snails in, they just love those.

[Kayleigh]

I feed mine flake fish food when they are small and as they get bigger squashed snails and chopped worms. They seem to eat any thing that falls into the pond. The newts like the snails and worms too. as well as the taddys

[Varan Komodosky]

They love to eat meat and each other. Try suspending a piece of raw chicken on some cotton just on the surface of the water from a stick (or one of those fishing garden gnomes!), sit back and enjoy the feeding frenzy.