In the past we had a small water feature in our back yard... only about 20 gallons of water with a fountain. There are acouple of areas on the side of the neighborhood streets wherepuddles occur regularly. For the as 3 years, my 7yr old daughter has collectedtadpoles from the puddles during the spring/early summer before thepuddles completely dried up and placed them in the fountain. We always made sure the little frogs had away to climb out safely once they grew their legs. Really, the only care we evergave these tadpoles was dropping a little frog food in daily. Although we've gotten to watch hundreds of tadpoles mature and hop away, we've never actually taken care of any of the little frogs.

This year things were alittle different. We never saw any frogsin the roadside puddles this late arriving spring.I don’tknow if it was just too cold or what.InSeptember, a neighbor came across tadpoles living in a puddle of water in theback corner of his boat.Before hepulled the plug to drain the water, he called to see if we were interested incaring for the tadpoles.We had alreadydisposed of the outside water fountain, so we cleaned out an aquarium in thehouse and let the tadpoles hang out in there.As the tadpoles grew front legs, we released them outside.We have a platform in the tank for frogs toclimb on when they are ready to leave the water … and we’ve learned that if wedidn’t get them out fairly quickly, we would often find them dead on the bottomof the tank within a couple of hours of seeing them sitting on the above waterplatform.Most of them were realeasedright away back when the weather was warmer, but I really don’t know how theydid after that point.

Earlier in the week, one ofthe little frogs grew legs. I put apotted plant in a little butterfly net with a small bowl of distilled waterthat containted some of the frog food he ate while he was a tadpole.I was worried about the weather gettingcolder.I wanted the frog to get used tothe outdoors, but while he was so tiny, I didn’t want him to have to deal withthe cold night air just yet.In anycase,the poor frog died before I brought him back in that night .

Yesterday, we found two morefrogs with front legs …sitting on the platform in the aquarium. They still had bits of tails, but asmentioned earlier, I was afraid to leave them in the aquarium much longerbecause I didn’t want them to drown and get eaten by the other tadpoles.So, we got a 2nd aquarium.We covered the bottom of the aquarium withdirt from outside, added some dry leaves and a couple of live plants.We also added a bowl of water with tadpolefood and distilled water to the tank.Weput popsicle sticks in the waterbowl so the frogs could climb back in if theyweren’t actually ready to leave the water.We then removed the two baby frogs from the water filled aquarium andput them into the bowl of water in the dirt filled tank.It didn’t take long for the little frogs toclimb out of the bowl and up onto the dirt.Last night one of the little frogs was snuggled beside the water bowl,while the other just sat in the dirt in the middle of the tank.I touched both of the frogs with one of thepopsicle sticks to see if they were doing OK.The one neslted beside the bowl moved away from the stick.The other one didn’t move at all.This morning, it was clear that the frog hadpassed away.Sadly, the other frog seemsto be moving very sluggishly today also.I’m worried he won’t make it through the night.I still have about 5 tadpoles left … I’mguessing we started with more than 100.Because it’s so cold outside now, I don’t know if the baby frogs canmake it if I let them go.I was hopingto let my daughter take care of them through the winter and then possibly letthem go in the spring?Unfortunately, I’mguessing that we are doing something wrong in the care of these newbabies.The temperatur in the house isabout 73 degrees.Both the water anddirt filled aquariums are located in an aread of the room surrounded by windows… but I don’t have a heat lamp or anything like that for the frogs.I have not fed the frogs anything other thantadpole food.Do you think the lightingor lack of anything other than tadpole pellets is the reason the baby frogsdied?Is letting the frogs go in thesprings even a humane thing to do?I’vejust never had frogs this late in the season.I could dump the aquarium with the five remaining tadpoles if theoutcome is going to be the same … but I really hate to do that.Sorry for the long, long post … any advice iswelcome.