Tadpoles eating my fry!

[mrsclem]

Help! These fry have survived a snapping turtle attack and I thought I was doing the right thing by moving as many as I could out of the main pond to the lily section. Now I'm seeing a lot of large tadpoles and less and less fry. Any ideas on how to separate the two? If I drain the area the fry will get caught in the pump. I could try to net them out but most of you know how fast fry are and tadpoles are even faster. Both stock tanks I have set up are filled with tadpoles so I would like to keep the fry in the area where they are .

 

[addy1]

Wow that is a problem Tadpoles tend to dive to the bottom or into plants when messed with. It would be a pita, but could you pull out the lilies or main plants, throw in some algae, string algae, aracharnis etc when you mess with the water the tadpoles dive for those areas. Maybe then you could scoop them out. at least some of them.

 

[mrsclem]

That was one of the ideas I had Addy. Problem is the fry are also hiding in the plants and aracharnis and I'm concerned about hurting them . They are still only 1/2". Any idea if a shop vac would grind up fry?

 

[addy1]

It would probably damage them they would get sucked in pretty strong slammed into the canister. We use a converted real low power shop vac to suck in bees. (made it to get them out of a wall in florida) even with the conversion it was still too powerful.

 

[addy1]

I guess the other choice would be to just net everything out and hand sort out the fry or tads. Time intensive, I sort out everything when I net the pond, does take time, but I can't just toss the live critters out with the debris.

 

[mrsclem]

Well, I got most of the tadpoles out. I put a pump into a fabric planter bag to make sure I didn't pump anybody up. I got it down to about
6", got all the plants out and started netting with a net the fry fit thru but would catch the tadpoles. Worked great. There are still some left in there but now at least most of the fry should survive. Couldn't get a head count but I'm thinking about 50-60 fry remaining. They are starting to develop color and patterns now.

 

[addy1]

good job!