Would love some tadpole identification help please

[Jjk]

I fulfilled a long-standing promise to my son to let him raise some tadpoles, but I had no idea there was such a variety! We found these in Cedar Creek in Natural Bridge, VA and they are much different from what I am familiar with from my childhood in Miami. We have done a ton of research online, but are not sure what we have. We captured 6 (miscounted, thought we had 5) and 4 of them are large -- about the size of my thumb, and two are smaller, but they all seem to be the same species. My kids thing we have Spring Peepers, I think we may have Leopard Frogs. I'm really, really hoping we do not have bullfrogs. Do you have any ideas of what we may have?



We've had them for almost three weeks now and no sign of any changes except for possible increase in size. Also, we have been feeding them some "tadpole granules" from the petstore and some fish flakes. They are not super active - I mean they will swim, but they seem to like to rest a lot and sometimes sleep on the leaves of the plants. We have 6 in a 10-gallon tank. Are we taking care of them well enough?

[KingCam]

I would recommend bringing this question to FieldHerpForum.com. You can find everything you need here as far as care goes, but when it comes to identifying wild animals there will be more people that can help you on FHF. They will probably also want a photo of the mouth. Mouth shape is important when it comes to IDing tadpoles.

[Jjk]

Thank you so much! I will try over there!

[MatthewTextor2000]

the frog tadpole you have there is a american bull frog I know this because I have 12 of these tadpoles in my tank and are all the same as yours in the photo, and they can take up to 2 years to fully grow up. hope this helps

[Psychotic]

I bet they are bullfrogs. I've raised both bullfrogs and green frogs. The bullfrog tadpoles are much bigger and pretty lazy. They seem to rarly move unless there's food! They also grow very very slow. In the wild they can take up to 2 or 3 years to turn into a frog. It depends on the weather. So in captivity it should take much less time.