Tadpoles in Bowl - need rescuing?

[Dave Blake]

My elderly mother has an old plastic washing-up bowl in the garden, left there for the frogs in summer. It is surrounded by greenery, and the frogs do use it. In March I found frog spawn in a very shallow dish in the garden, with little hope for its survival I dropped the spawn, dish and all, into the bowl. To my surprise mum now has a bowl of tadpoles.

There is a rock in the bowl and a tile providing shade over one side, so I believe that they will be able to escape to cover if they grow into frogs, and I try to keep the bowl topped up with rain water. But there is absolutely no planting in the bowl, and the water has become an opaque green (after a few days sun). I worry that the tadpoles now seem to be gulping for air at the surface a lot - that is how I know they are still there, because the water is too goopy to see. I also worry that they don't have enough food (apart from the things that fall in what is there to eat but neighbours?). Mind you, they have grown into full-size tadpoles so they must be eating something.

Do these tadpole need rescuing again?? Having given nature a helping hand already, I kind of feel responsible. Mum is worried about them too, but would love to grow baby frogs so I would rather not remove them unless I had to. It is also quite a trek to my pond. Are these tadpoles doomed, or can I just leave nature to take its course? Is there anything simple I can do with the bowl to enhance their chances of survival? Provide food? Clean the water somehow? I just fear that messing about I will make things worse.

Advice experts please!
Dave

[galanthus]

They'll only eat algae until legs start to emerge, some peeps give them lettuce too. You can feed them fish flakes, bits of ham, chicken etc if there's nothing else to eat when they have legs, tho you may have a small amount of pond life you can't see.

Maybe you could dig a kind of mini pond and transfer them over, looks like they're there to stay

[Dave Blake]

So guessing that the deep green colour to the water means lots of algae then they should be happy in it. Mind you the tadpoles in my pond don't have legs yet and they are definately tucking into anything meaty they can get. I tried them on crushed snail (lawn mower casualty), and it was a swirling mass of tadpole in moments. But the water in my pond is very clear, I can see all the way to the bottom.

I'll get mum on feeding hers, hope she does not over do it as you can't really see them in the green soup, only their movements. Digging even a tiny pond in mum's garden is a problem with trees and drains. I wonder if splitting them into a second plastic bowl (with rock, shade and full of rain water) would suffice, help minimise the canibalism at least? Do they need oxygenated water and water plants? It would seem not so far.

Isn't nature amazing

[galanthus]

You could do a small raised pond and just make sure there's access in and out via 2 sloping sides. No digging needed then and at least you'll get creatures colonising it. Failing that, yeah I'd go for the splitting them into 2 but wld put a handful of pondweed into both for cover and health.