The 2013 frog thread

[Shdwdrgn]

Is it too early to start planning for Spring frogs? I think not! After 5-1/2 years of having a pond, with only a single bullfrog ever showing up (then leaving), I tried to find hardy leopard frogs last year, without success. So today I started out finding my State's wildlife page on native frogs. It turns out there are a couple other local frog species which are rather small (up to 1.5 inches), one of which is the western chorus frog. This little guy has the advantage that he is found in the wild all over my area, and is not on any endangered lists. I'm hoping I can do some scouting this year and find some tadpoles to start out in my pond, and finally have some wildlife around the borders of the pond...

So what's everyone else planning for their frogs this year?

 

[addy1]

They come all by themselves, maryland green frogs, gray tree frogs, bull frogs, pickerel frogs, toads. Bull frogs I try to move on, but they come back.............

Hope you have luck finding some!

 

[sissy]

get rid of them as they clog up the pumps and filters with there there taddies

 

[gardengimp]

Well, our 2013 started today. Walked out this morning and found two batches of frog eggs. Even for us, January is a bit too early for tadpoles. We've had a hot spell, and the frogs have been singing for several evenings now. Guess they hooked up. Ours our mostly Southern Leopard Frogs, though I do need to look up the new one that showed up late fall. This is the Florida go to frog page. It is amazing how small some of the frogs can be.

 

[Shdwdrgn]

It's good that the Southern leopard frogs are still doing so well. The Northerns have started to hit the endagered list in some areas. Nobody is quite sure what's happening to them, but bullfrogs are one of the primary suspects.

I've seen some pretty tiny tree frogs, but I don't think they would get along with my cat. His hobby this last Summer was eating dragonflies.

 

[addy1]

get rid of them as they clog up the pumps and filters with there there taddies

They drop eggs only in my stream ponds, lotus pond, deck ponds, never in the big pond with the fish. So clogging the filter or pump has never been an issue. We do get tads in the big pond, but only after they have grown some.

 

[sissy]

I try to get rid of the eggs before they hatch but there are so man frogs here it is terrible .I had my pump plugged up 8 times last year and filters were just full of the tiny things .The fish were not even interested in eating them after awhile .I took buckets of them down to the creek .The last was the toads

 

[j.w]

I heard one crazy little frog outside the other day here chirping away in the cold weather!

 

[callingcolleen1]

No frogs here, lots of them two blocks down at the creek, none want to leave the creek and come to my pond..

 

[CometKeith]

I think I ended up with three or so frogs at the end of last year. One or two are bull frogs and at least one is a green frog. I'm hoping they are active this year because I had so many goldfish babies last year before I got the frogs. I'm hoping these frogs and their tadpoles will eat the goldfish eggs this year. I can't swing another 30 goldfish in my pond. I don't know what I'm going to do with the last years babies yet. Plan A is get another biofilter and increase filtration. Plan B is expand the pond. Plan C is give away the babies from last year........i can't!!!!!

 

[sissy]

well id some work by my pond and what jumps out at me but a frog ,great another one .

 

[Shdwdrgn]

@CometKeith - If you can find hardy weather loaches, they will solve your problem. I have had ZERO surviving babies since I added weather loaches to my pond. That wasn't my intent, but they are extremely good at finding eggs and hatchlings.

http://www.loaches.com/species-index/weather-loach-misgurnis-anguillicaudatus

Note that there seems to be a lot of conflicting information about their temperature range. I keep both the regular and the albino variety in my pond. Our Winter temperatures don't get quite as cold as Chicago, but they appear to actually have the same tolerance as koi and comets - which means nearly down to freezing. They enjoy a sandy bottom and piles of river rocks. You won't see them very often except when feeding near sunset, but they're good at cleaning up excess food and stirring up the muck on the bottom.

 

[brandonsdad02]

We had 6 sets of toads lay eggs in our pond last spring. Not sure what makes them so attracted to my pond, but they are all over. I started off with one bull frog tad but it got caught in the old pump so it didn't make it. I ended up taking out 7 big bull frogs this fall. No clue where they came from either. I have several shallow areas in the pond now and most of the bog has about a inch of water on top of the gravel. Should that be filled in with more rock or just leave as it is?

 

[brokensword]

hey Shdwdrgn:

once upon a time, I found some of those western chorus frogs myself, but that was before I built a pond. Now that I'd like to do as you're doing, I can't find a sniff of them. Maybe they're in decline in my area. I even went online and looked to buy some chorus frogs/tads/, but they're apparently not commercially viable. Anyway, IF you do find some eggs/tads, maybe we could find a way for you to post some this way (Mi) and let me pay freight? Let me know! In the meantime, I'll try to time the mating season around here and continue looking.


Michael

 

[Shdwdrgn]

@brokensword - the problem with that, which is exactly the same problem I face, is that it is illegal to sell native species within a State. Then again, I'm not sure how it works out if you are not commercially selling them, but rather simply trading or gifting. I have run across references that sometimes you can acquire species eggs from your State's wildlife service, so that may be another option.

In my case, the western chorus frogs are reported to be quite pervasive in my area... but not being an expert on tadpoles, if I were to go collect some from the wild, how would I know which species I had? Most of them are very similar in appearance in the tadpole stage...