Too many Tadpoles

[rona]

I have a tiny garden pond, the frogs have for the last 20 years produced spawn and a good number have matured into frogs.
This year though, they seem to have gone mad, there are far too many tadpoles for such a small pond.
Any suggestions on how to help the maximum survive?
My main concerns are the heat and quality of water when the summer comes and they are half grown. I have no pump.
Also, with so many, I cannot see that there will be enough food to sustain them all.

[Dogghound]

Originally Posted by rona

I have a tiny garden pond, the frogs have for the last 20 years produced spawn and a good number have matured into frogs.
This year though, they seem to have gone mad, there are far too many tadpoles for such a small pond.
Any suggestions on how to help the maximum survive?
My main concerns are the heat and quality of water when the summer comes and they are half grown. I have no pump.
Also, with so many, I cannot see that there will be enough food to sustain them all.

My advice is leave them, most die or are eaten by predators. They will feed on eachother too. Dont put a pump in pumps can such tadpoles in and shred them. Does the pond have lots of plants? oxygenator's etc? frogs often breed in small pools which are baked by the sun and manage fine.

[rona]

Thank you for your reply.
Yes I have plants and the pond grows copious amounts of algae.
I do have to constantly top the pond up in the summer otherwise it would end up as a puddle.
It really is very small

[dampflippers]

I agree- make usre there are lots of oxygenators to help with water quality. They will also mop up excess nutrients and help reduce algal growth.
Tadpoles eat algae, so it isn't all bad.

Keep them all, top up as necessary, add more oxygenators and enjoy.
You could also add a couple of bags of live daphnia which will also help the water quality. (aquarium shop 40p to £1)

[Ladywell]

Frogs lay spawn in only one of our five connected troughs on our land. The trough is approximately 2 feet by 4 feet - it is absolutely overflowing with spawn (as it is every year). There are no plants in the trough other than moss on the edges. We always have copious amounts of froglets hopping about later on the year. Perhaps they lay so much spawn that, given the mortality rate, at least a proportion will survive.

[King Edward]

From the sound of it your pond and frogs are doing fine. A photo of it would be interesting. I don't think adding Daphnia would be of any benefit, and in a small pond they'd probably mostly die from lack of sufficient food anyway. So long as you keep the water topped up, I think they'd be fine with the water warming up in the sun (which will speed up their development). If there's lots of filamentous algae (blanketweed) then that's fine for them.

Other than that, just make sure there's good cover around the pond that the froglets can use when they leave the water, since they're quite vulnerable at that stage.

[maggiem]

Hello,
We have exactly the opposite problem - for the first time since we dug our pond 7 years ago, we have NO frog spawn, no tadpoles!
Any ideas as to why, would be welcome - the pond looks no different to previous years.
And is it too late to get frog spawn from a local pond - or is that illegal, or not recommended?
Thanks.

[Dogghound]

Originally Posted by maggiem

We have exactly the opposite problem - for the first time since we dug our pond 7 years ago, we have NO frog spawn, no tadpoles!
Any ideas as to why, would be welcome - the pond looks no different to previous years.

Its very complex and hard to say without vising your garden/local area. Frogs tend to prefer new ponds which could be a simple explaination. Or habitat could have been lost or gained in the wider area. Do you have large numbers of newts, dragonfly nymphs or fish in the pond?

Originally Posted by maggiem

And is it too late to get frog spawn from a local pond - or is that illegal, or not recommended?

Not recommended. It is a means of spreading disease, also if the frogs chose not to breed in your pond its likely that there is a reason for this.

[maggiem]

Thanks for the helpful reply. No we don't have newts or anything else - the problem actually began a couple of years ago, with diminishing/vanishing frog spawn, and at that time we had a snake in the garden - probably a grass snake, I hope, but we only saw him very briefly and rarely! But we haven't seen him for 2 years, and had hoped he'd left.
We're in a very rural part of Kent, and no local habitats have been altered or vanished.
Maggie

[GCN lova]

if there are TOO many tadpoles then maybe you should take some out and keep them seperately as if there is not enough food and oxygen there could be a massacre and you could end up with a polluted pond (which stinks believe me!) but i doubt you'll have to do that. do you have any (natural) predators?