Last year my step-parents-in-law decided to get my daughter a "leopard frog tadpole kit" for her fourth birthday. Personally I think unsolicited pets of any kind are a terrible gift, but they're not the kind of people that think things like that all the way through, and so a few days before her birthday the kit showed up with three tadpoles and a cracked 2-gallon acrylic container. I didn't know anything about keeping frogs but I am an aquarium enthusiast, so I decided that I'd do my best to provide a proper home for these frogs. I immediately replaced their container with a spare 10 gallon tank (unfiltered and unheated, with weekly 90% water changes) and set about converting a spare 29 gallon tank into a suitable leopard frog habitat with water and land areas.

The instructions with the kit declared that the tadpoles would turn into frogs in 12-14 weeks. This was not the case... not even close. The first one to transform took six months to do so. The second one took 11 months. Unfortunately when this one transformed I thought it was large enough to coexist with the first but I was wrong, and it disappeared a few nights after I added it to the adult frog enclosure. The last one shows no signs of growing legs even now, 14 months after I got them. So, my first question is what is going on here? Why are they taking so long?

My second question is about the species of the frog. The odd thing is that my "leopard frog" has no leopard spots. I attributed this to some quirk of the environment I have it in, but someone who has seen photos thinks it's not a leopard frog at all, but rather a bullfrog instead. So, I would like some expert opinions on what species it truly is. Please see the attached photographs, and let me know if more detailed photos or other information is needed to address my questions. Thank you for your time.

back when the frog was a tadpole:


frog as it is now, belly view:

side view: