Wood frog tadpoles

[boobooc]

I have what I am pretty sure is a pond of wood frog tadpoles and they hatched some time in April and they still don't have legs yet. What is up with them? They are supposed to mature much faster when they are in a vernal pool, but why are they taking so long in my pond. In a different pond I all ready have a 2nd batch of toad tadpoles getting ready to leave the water.
Does any one have experience observing wood frog tadpoles?

[Kurt]

Are sure they are wood frogs?

[boobooc]

I'm pretty sure, I've looked at photos and they look just like them. We've had wood frogs laying eggs in our pond for years, so I know there were eggs. What is weird is that they take so long to mature. This is an annual thing andhas been going on for more than 10 years. We cleaned our pond last year because it was completely covered by duckweed, so now I have can really watch their development which I hadn't really been able to watch very well for the last few years due to duckweed.

[Kurt]

I assume the pond has not dried up then?

[Iratus ranunculus]

Where do you live? In most of their range they lay eggs a bit earlier. But yeah, they should have legs. Unless your cleaning of the pond reduced the nutrients they had available.

[boobooc]

I live in Vt and we've had a warm summer. I never thought about them losing nutrients, but they sure seem happy, there are still a lot of them and I know they can cannibalize each other if they are starving. The pond is probably 10 feet across and about 3 ft deep in the middle.

[boobooc]

I think I may have figured it out. I was reading a chapter on wood frogs in Bernd Heinrich's book called Summer World,where he talks about wood frog development being determined by the amount of protein they get. He thinks part of their cannibalism helps them develop quicker and that is what happens when the ponds start to dry up. The tadpoles become concentrated in one area and start eating each other and quickly start to develop legs. If I wanted to do an experiment with my pond and see if I could speed up their development what could I feed them? Fish flakes?

[Kurt]

Fish flakes would probably work.