Raising Amphibians

Raising Amphibians

How to raise Tadpoles

In order to raise tadpoles, you'll need a suitable container, like an aquarium, fishbowl, or garden pond. Be sure it has good shade - about 3/4 shade is ideal.
Tadpoles absolutely depend on having fresh, clean water.
Chlorine is deadly to tadpoles! If using tap water, let it stand exposed to full sunlight for 5 to 7 days. This will allow the Chlorine to be removed by evaporation.
If you don't have that much time, you can buy de-chlorinating drops at your local fish-carrying pet store.

What do tadpoles eat?
frog and toad tadpoles are vegetarians, (unlike the tadpoles of newts and salamanders), and are very easy to feed. they love lettuce! you can boil the lettuce for 10 to 15 minutes, drain it, and keep it in a baggie in the freezer. Give the tadpoles a pinch every few days. you can also give them water reptiles food sometimes, but not instead of lettuce!
don't forget, too much food will get the water all dirty. however, tadpoles of some toads and frogs can morph from placid plant eaters to fierce cannibals if their pools threaten to run dry or if food is scarce. By becoming meat eaters that snack on other tadpoles, the cannibals speed up their development, hoping to transform into toads before the water or food run out. so be sure to feed them enough!

If your water gets dirty really fast, slow down on the feeding, and be sure to replace the dirty water with some fresh spare water.

don't forget to be patient! The length of time a tadpole takes to develop really depends on what kind of frog it came from and on the environmental conditions. some tadpoles can remain in their tadpole stage as long as 8 months, while others only take 6 to 9 weeks!

When the tadpoles start getting close to developing legs, they will need some sort of perch so they can get out of the water. You can create ledges using stones or even tilting slopes of plastic in tanks.

at the point where they aren't big enough to eat crickets but are too large to eat lettuce, you can try starting them off with small insects. A good substitute is bloodworms which are usually found in pet stores that carry fish.

The tilt of the ledge may be important depending on what type of frog you have. Young tree frogs can climb smooth vertical surfaces such as the plastic pond liners and glass, but the ground dwelling frogs will need a rough slope when the time comes to climb out of the water.