Found some little friends in my pond!

When I got home from school today, I saw my dog was poking around at the pond, so I decided to have a look at it. What I found were to little American Toads mating!

After letting them do their business, I did a closer inspection and I found eggs!

Here's some pics!

Female


Part of the male


Eggs!


"Back off!"


Sorry the pics are so bad. I have yet to get a water pump for the pond, so the water is green and gross. I won't be getting fish for the pond until I get a good liner and a pump.

 

wow those are great pictures!

 

Very interesting pictures.
I have those in the ponds here too.
Plus spring peepers, in the cattle trough next to my house.

 

Cool !!!

 

Thanks!

I just went outside and they are singing to each other! VERY loudly! haha

Dino: Do yours lay eggs? I'm kinda excited to see if they hatch. Since I don't have any fish in there, I think they have a pretty good chance.

 

Oh yeah, I have A. toads, spring peepers and leopard frog tads in the contained water and bullfrog tads in my gamefish pond. All are so heavily planted that some always survive.

Yeah, I love listening to the frogs, which is why the trough has not been moved from by my back door.
30 or so peepers going gets VERY loud.

 

they look great, hopefully some can make it and you'll have a few new friends for the pond, and will keep your insect population down.

 

That's good to know that some will survive.

I'm really glad this whole thing happened because the toad population around here has gone down a lot in the past couple years. I hardly see any of them anymore.

 

Pesticides have reduced amphibian populations in a lot of areas.

 

I'm not sure if that's the case here or not. There are quite a few farms around here, but as far as I know, none of the local ones use harsh pesticides.

 

yeah I wish that they would spend some research time on some more animal and plant friendly alternatives.

 

That is good to hear, Dillion. I know also a lot get run over by cars.

 

In wisconsin we only have 12 species and all but 2 or 3 are at endangered or threatened. While other species ex green frog is seen all the time.

 

Tadpoles..... 100s and 100s..... of tadpoles...... EVERYWHERE!

I just got home and my mom said there were a bunch of them in the pond. I was expecting to see just a little spot of them, but no. There had to be least 5 per square inch in that whole pond.

I haven't seen the parents for a while. What can I feed them? do they feed off of algae in the pond?

 

Yes, they eat algae.
If you want to feed them, toss in a few lettus leaves.

 

Thanks Dino!

I'm going to be draining the pond tomorrow and putting in a new liner. I'm gonna put all the tadpoles in a bucket and get a picture so you can all see how many their are!