Raising Tadpoles 2021 edition

The spadefoot tadpoles are continuing to eat and grow.  They're rear legs are continuing to develop.  Right now, if I had to guess, I'd say they will likely be at the froglet stage by this weekend.  I did some water changes this afternoon (after I shot the video clip.)  So far, the narrowmouth tadpole seems to be doing well.

I've seen rear legs on multiple tadpoles. You can see them in the first photo below of Hoss.  The tadpole food for the Narrowmouths came in today.  Glad a least one of is still alive (second photo below.) Fella seems to like the stuff, which is a good sign.

The rest of the outdoor group (the campers) perished today.  I was keeping an eye in attempt to keep the sun off their "pond" but it still ended up getting direct sun and quickly heated up when I was not looking and killed off the rest. I'm pretty mad at myself right now.  There is a survivor though: Earlier in the week, I got one of the Narrowmouth tadpoles and brought the fella inside.

Not too much news. I did more the outdoor group to a safer spot.  I noticed possible rear leg formation on Hoss.  The Narrowmouth tadpoles do go nuts for food as show in the video below.

The indoor group is doing fine. I did split the jar into two to give them more space.  Some sads today: Some members of the outdoor group passed away today. I believe it was likely due to their "pond" getting a bit too hot.  I'll have to make some more adjustments to keep things better shaded.  I think I've figured out why the last year group of Narrowmouth tadpoles passed away: I learned that their main diet is plankton.  The combination of giving them the wrong food and also frequently keeping their water too clean (and thus removing a good bit of any plankton in the water) set them up for failure.  I have some algae wafers ordered that should hopefully work.

What's really neat about these guys are their bodies are somewhat transparent so you can see some of their organs such as the intestines in the photo below. It's hard to get nice, sharp photos due to them zooming around so much.

And a few more photos:

Some older photos when they were still quite small:

They're continuing to eat and grow rapidly.  I'm 99 percent sure they're Eastern Spadefoot tadpoles.  I took some better video today with the help of a tripod.  Everybody seems to be doing well.  The video is before I split them up into more jars.

There is one that has his own jar, I've decided to name him Hoss as he's larger than the rest (not surprising as the fella has a jar all to itself.)

But there's more!

On Friday of last week, I decided to save some more and made and outdoor group called the campers. Most of them appear to be Spadefoots, but I've noticed two of them that might not be. I managed to scoop one of the two different ones into a separate jar. It might be Narrowmouth, but I'm not sure yet. If it is, hopefully the Narrowmouth curse will be broken this time around.

They're still growing fast.  Most are thriving but there was at least a sad or two (deaths), but that's not uncommon.  I'm planning to split the jar by Tuesday (wanted to give them a chance to grow a bit before subjecting them to additional stress of moving.) They have went from little specs hanging around still by the surface to being full of energy. Sorry for the shaky video, will use a tripod the next time.

They have nearly tripped in size since I got them two days ago. Based on their rapid growth I'd say they're Eastern Spadefoots. Sadly, I don't have any updated photos yet, but I will soon.

Finally got a lot of rainfall recently to have a temporary pond (my ditch) again. So out I went to get some tadpoles.  Got both infant tadpoles and some tadpole eggs.  Normally the best thing to do would be to led them develop in the pond, but since the pond will certainly dry up before they can develop to the point of no longer needing it, the ones I catch are the lucky ones.

I'm going to hold off naming them until I've split them up to more jars.