Need help with a horrible frog and ant situation

[Froggles]

Hi everyone. Half vent/half advice seeking, so huge amount of text ahead but I'm hoping you can help out. Summary at the end.

Three and a half months back, we rescued a couple hundred very young Peron's tree frog tadpoles that were in our pool and started raising them in a pet pool nearby under the shade. We made a filtration system for them, gave them plenty of green food and supplements and every single one of them grew very big and happy.

The last few weeks we've seen some of them turn into frogs. We were hoping they would venture forth into the wild, but they seem to want to stick around, so we put some food there to attract insects and we would move some to the front of our house every few days.

Unfortunately the last week and a half has been tragic. Somehow a heron got to our froglets and in one afternoon ate 90% of them. This was devastating because we didn't even know there were water birds in our area and the pool was hidden under the house! The ones who survived all hid under the rocks we set up in the pool. They were no longer happy to see us and would now scamper away at any sign of movement. We set up two layers of mesh to protect the rest, and the heron has not managed to get any more.

However now we have a new problem. It seems a bunch of tiny black ants have discovered the new frogs today, and my partner came to the horrifying sight of them swarming and eating two of them. He knew those two specifically because one of them was small and a darker colour. They were fine in the morning. He's very upset because he loves his frogs. How can we prevent ants from getting to them? What's the best place to put them in our yard to give them the best shot at life? Trees, bushes, preferably somewhere without ants? This has been a surprisingly emotional journey...

Tl;dr - ants are killing and eating the frogs who live under our house that we raised from tadpoles. They're Peron's tree frogs. How do we either prevent this from happening, or where can we move the frogs so they have the best chance at a full and happy life? We are rather attached...

[Herpin Man]

You could try placing double sided tape on the outside of the enclosure. This might create a barrier to the ants.

[Bynny Ribbit]

So sorry you and your little guys are going through this. Do you have access to peppermint oil or another oil that repels insects like ants? You obviously can't put it in with the frogs for safety reasons, but if you put it around their enclosure and where the ants are getting in, hopefully that can help keep them away.

Another effective solution would be to bite the bullet and just fully adopt them by giving them an indoor enclosure. You seem very invested in their well-being and this would insure they will likely reach adulthood. Otherwise...this is kind of the circle of life in the wild. There's a reason critters like rabbits and frogs breed in high numbers; they're prey animals and only a few out of a large number make it to adulthood for many reasons.