Frog tadpoles might be little unusual, but some people consider them to be the best pets of all time. Raising tadpoles is more than fun, it can be educational and easy. What you have to know before dealing with tadpoles? What do tadpoles eat? We’ll try to help you get some useful information.
First of all, you will have to provide an appropriate container, something like a fishbowl, aquarium, garden pond, plastic garbage bin etc. Be sure that there are no pine trees, oleanders and other potentially poisonous plants near the container. Also, it should have good shade, ideally 3/4.
Tadpoles require clean and fresh water. If you use tap water, put it in direct Sun exposure for about 6, 7 days to allow the Chlorine to evaporate. If you don’t want to wait that much, you could use de-chlorinating drops (you can buy that in almost every pet store), but leave the water out overnight after that, because Chlorine can be deadly to frog tadpoles. If you have some local creek, pond or stream nearby, make sure it is not polluted.
Tadpoles eat lettuce and you can boil it for up to 15 minutes, drain it, chop it and freeze it. If you use an average ice-cube tray, 1 cube in couple of days is enough. If you give them too much food, their water might get dirty. In that case, slow down on feeding and replace dirty water with some fresh and clean spare water.
It takes between 6 and 12 weeks to develop from egg to tadpole and than to frog. However, temperature does matter and it takes some more time if it is colder or the development can be even suspended until the temperatures rise. Also, the length of development period depends on what kind of frog it is and telling what kind of frog tadpole came from is very hard to do. However, it is recommended to look for a regional guide and to find out what kind of animals live in your area and how do certain frog species look like as tadpoles.