My tadpoles are coming of age!!

[mavis3107]

Hi All,
My disabled swimming pool has become a tadpole sanctuary. There are no mosquitos, as I put the larvacide blocks in several months ago.
I've been nurturing them for several weeks, the little ones (some kind of tree frog) are losing their tails, The 'pond' has maybe 16 inches of water left in the bottom, the top of the pool/pond is over eight feet above where they are hanging out on floating debris,.I fear they cannot escape without my assistance.

The second variety are big juicy guys, I see a lot of big honking toads,(maybe 3-6 inches long) in my yard and assume these are their kin! Some of these guys have both front legs, and one of the legs is trapped inside the skin, they grow their rear legs and it's still trapped inder the skin, is there something I can do to help or do they rub a hole once they get on dry ground? I noticed two of them died and figured it was due to this condition.

Will the big guys eat the little guys? When can I safetly free the little guys?

So many froggy questions can you help??

I can answer questions about parrots as I have eight, but frogs....I got no knowledge.

Anyway, thanks for being here and helping out!

Mavis

[JimO]

Welcome! Sounds like quite a busy pool you have. Actually, toadlets are pretty tiny (size of a small pea) and the tads are completely black. Green tree frog tads are bigger than toad tads and they aren't so dark. Leopard frog tads get to be about the size of a dime (without the tail). I've not seen other tree frog tads (at least that I could identify as such). Tadpoles of one species can eat those of another and some are even cannibalistic, but other than removing them and separating them, I'm sure what you can do to prevent that. It becomes more of a problem as the pool of water shrinks. You might capture and add some rain water or well water (assuming it's not treated with chemicals) to keep the water level up.

If there are treefrog tads in there, the froglets won't have any problem climbing out. Toadlets might and if they are fully metamorphozed it wouldn't hurt to give them a helping hand.

[mavis3107]

Thanks JimO~ I won't fret about the little fellers, since they can get out on their own .

What do you think about the front leg being fully formed but still INSIDE the skin?
Right now there's one left, out of the three with this problem. The other two died (out of 50 or so big juicy guys), it seems they can't swim or hop correctly once the tail starts curving and their boyancy changes and the front leg is still underneath the skin. Is this a common problem with all frogs/toads or do I have a "love canal" type problem in my yard causing mutations??
Think I'll look around the forum, it seems very thorough, friendly, maybe I'll learn something new!!!

Thanks again!

[JimO]

It's normal for the front legs to form beneath a layer of skin, but they are supposed to pop out just before the tail starts to be absorbed. The three out of 50 is probably not an abnormal mortality based on problems with formation of the front legs. If it was me, I'd try to help the last guy free his legs if it looks like he will die otherwise. But, not to worry, if there was a serious external cause, I suspect that most of the frogs would have been deformed.