Frogs out - Toads in

[Madelinew]

Well the frogs have been busy filling up my pond with spawn. It's certainly keeping the newts well fed. The frogs have disappeared now and the male toads are moving in. I've never had both breed the same year in my ponds so am watching closely to see if I get toad spawn too. There must be newt eggs in there as well because the area is teeming with them (as usual) and I've seen lots of very heavily laden females. Moved one today in fact when I was shifting some rotting vegetation from a bed.

[lucas]

Have you had any toadspawn yet? How strange they seem to take it in turns! Lucas

[toadpole]

hi there has anybody got any toadspawn yet ...my frogspawn has all hatched successfully and they are all swimming around nicely (my frogs spawned on march 4th) but what i was really hoping and praying for is toadspawn !!!! i have 2 toads in the pond (been there 2 weeks now ) but i think they are 2 males they are not calling at all and at one point they were clamped together for 2 days but just stayed under the wood thats in the pond .....should i give up hope or just accept that i just have 2 gay toads

[Madelinew]

Not a bit of toadspawn I'm afraid and all the male toads have disappeared again so I assume there was no female in the area. I'm also assuming that the females probably return to the same area each year to lay so I'm hoping she's survived the winter.

Watching my frog spawn closely has illustrated clearly just how precarious the life of amphibians are right from the early stages. I've been out at night and often disturbed a large number of newts feeding on it and even found a nymph of some kind attacking it from below. Each day, there is a large quantity of empty eggs with holes in them. Such is life. Part of the circle OF life so I don't have a problem with that.

Then we had some more severe frosts of the like we rarely get here on the Isle of Wight which didn't do it much good. Followed by large quantities of sunshine. Yippee you might think but not so. The wretched algae is back and a big layer of it settled on top of the remaining spawn.

It must be well past hatching time by now as it's been in there quite a while now but I haven't seen any tadpoles. They may well have gone down into the depths of the pond but crikey, don't they have an uphill struggle to survive?

I'm very tempted to remove some of it next year and allow it to hatch safely before returning it to the pond after removing that wretched algae which is the bane of my life and responds to no natural treatments. In fact it grows over them.

It's a wildlife pond, teeming with newts and the nymphs of many species so I don't want to interfere too much and certainly cannot introduce a chemical treatment. I shall just have to continue to manually remove the algae and balance the casualties caused by that against those that have a better chance of survival with it gone.

[miranda]

Yes.I think you're absolutely right to let he algae sort itself out...though you could try introducing other native oxygenators and/or reducing the amount of sunshine that lands on pond by growing tall plants on one side....?
It's amazing,isnt it, how ponds achieve their own precarious balance....and how much they change from year to year.All ponds will eventually,if unmanaged however,tend back to swamp and then bog.This is the natural cycle of things.So a bit of gunge-removal from bottom of pond every year or so plus making effort to prevent too many leaves falling in and cutting back marginal plants is required just to keep pond as pond!
Pity you dont have toadspawn this time around.Yes,baby amphibians do have a dangerous time or it! I like rearing spawn in separate containers (either inside the house or just in a netted off area of pond) to give them a head start.It's fun to watch them grow too.It's surprising how many you can 'rear' in this way.One small clump or string goes a very long way.

[Madelinew]

Sadly I don't think I can leave the algae to sort itself out. It suffocated the life out of the pond last year and killed off an awful lot of stuff. I'm reduced to manually removing as much of it as I can. If the lilies came into leaf earlier, it wouldn't be a problem because they cover the surface and stop the stuff forming. It was thick with it last year - all across the surface and into the depths.

[miranda]

The main thing is that you don't resort to chemicals.Have you tried straw bundles floating on the surface? Some say that's effective. How deep is pond (at deepest)? and/or could it be made any bigger?

[Madelinew]

I had 3 straw - I think it's actually barley - bundles in there last year and the flaming stuff grew over it all in no time. Talk about insulting of it