Image: Tadpoles
Raising tadpoles can be fun and educational for kids, as they will get to see life cycle from tadpoles to frog. Before you start, here are a few things to know so you can successfully raise tadpoles at home. This article shows how to raise tadpole, if you want to know more details about tadpole raising, how to feed and what type of container and feeding needed please check out our other article, Detailed Caring tips for Raising Tadpoles.
Things to know before you raise tadpoles:
- In order to raise tadpoles, you’ll need a suitable container, like an aquarium, fishbowl, or garden pond. You can start in glass jar at home too.
- Tadpoles likes shade and avoid direct Sun. Be sure it has good shade – about 3/4 shade is ideal for them.
- Tadpoles absolutely depend on having fresh, clean water. Chlorine is deadly to tadpoles!If you take the water from a local stream, creek or pond, be sure it isn’t polluted. Ideally, you can get it upstream from any suspected sources like factories, sewers, etc.
- 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.
- You can get also ready made tadpole raising kit available which has everything you will need to get started.
What do I feed tadpoles?
Frog and toad tadpoles are vegetarians, (unlike the tadpoles of newts and salamanders), and are very easy to feed.
They seemed to 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! You can feed them tadpole or fish food as well.
Other thing to know is that 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! But don’t forget, too much food will get the water all dirty.
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.
How long will it take from Tadpole to become Frog?
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! So be patience. Some species of frog have known to slow down process during colder climate. You can read kids A Tadpole Grows Up (Scholastic News Nonfiction Readers: Animal Life Cycles) for easy to show the transformation and life cycle as it happens.
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 blood worms 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.