aquatic immaculate conception??

[casadeeray]

Hiya

I am hoping someone can shed some light on this apparent aquatic immaculate conception:

We live in Manchester and have a lovely little pond in the garden. Over the last 4 years, our pond has bubbled with frog spawn and close to a hundred adult frogs. We have observed a regular and natural cycle inwhich we have never interfeared.

Until recently.

We emptied the pond completely in April, changed the water, bought 4 goldfish and otherwise left the pond to itself. It's been less than 4 weeks, but we have just noticed the pond is teeming with millions of little tadpoles. But for the life of us, we can't explain the tadpoles, since we haven't seen any spawn at all!?

Surely there is a logical explanation to this, but I've been unable to find any information anywhere, so I sincerely hope someone here can provide a plausible explanation for our spawnless tadpole development.

Any questions, please don't hesitate.
Thanks in advance

[GCN lova]

wow that is interesting... was there spawn before you emptied it out? are you sure there wasnt any toadspawn? there arent many ways that tadpoles can suddenly reappear without spawn. my first suggestion was that birds could arrive with tadpoles or spawn but that huge number is way rather large for birds to bring.

[Ukwildlifeo]

My 2 best theories would be:

1. Toadspawn - their spawn is in strings below the surface wrapped around plants where it is hard to see (compared to frogspawn anyway!). The fact you have fish would suggest this also, as toad tadpoles are poisionous so fish leave them alone, where as most of frog tadpoles would have been eaten by now. They also have a later spawning time which could have been after you cleaned out the pond.

2. Frogspawn, but it sank rather than floated at the surface so you did not see it.

hope that helps

[Kayleigh]

I think it was toadspawn too, I have it wrapped round my plants and its very hard to see as its under the water.

Welcome to WAB..

[tom00_uk]

are you sure its not fry with their egg sacs still present?

[casadeeray]

Originally Posted by tom00_uk

are you sure its not fry with their egg sacs still present?

hmmm....you may very well have a point there !!!
So after reading your post I called the pet store that had sold us then gold fish, and they estimated them (at 5 months) to be too young to mate. However, I think that this is exactly what has happened and I will send a little update when I'm back in the UK.

In the meantime, I want to thank you all for your prompt and insightful answers

[~T~]

Do they look like this?

http://cdn.wn.com/pd/78/a7/46f515683...c90_grande.jpg

[casadeeray]

~T~
Not quite...they are still so small, hardly grown at all these past 5 weeks. Plus there are considerably fewer of them, don't know if the fish have eaten them?
But they look very different to those in your picture, they have a "tail" that bends in a 90 degree angle, quite strange. I am still at a complete loss as to what they really are. But I will send a picture when I am back in Manchester in a couple of weeks.

Thanks for your efforts!

[Lancashire Lad]

Originally Posted by casadeeray

....But they look very different to those in your picture, they have a "tail" that bends in a 90 degree angle, quite strange....

If they haven't grown after such an amount of time, and with "tails" that bend at 90 degrees, they may actually be different batches of Mosquito pupae.

Regards,
Mike.

[Tringa]

Do you have any photos you can post on the forum, Casa?

I find this very confusing. I agree with other post about the possibility of larvae, but you said your pond, before you emptied it, had loads of tadpoles, so you obviously know what tadpoles look like.

Dave