Tadpole Diary

Minnow Breeding: Success!

Kaleidoscope — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 13:46:27 +0000

June 15 2008: Okay so there’s some backstory to go through first. After a few weeks of no activity in the minnow tank we gave up on the idea and put them back in the main tank. Only to discover an incredibly useful article on how to breed small characins (a family the minnows belong to) which gave detailed instructions on what we should be doing. So we decided to try again, this time following these instructions. We blacked out the smaller tank with bin liners and placed one female in there on her own. We’ll fed her on a diet of live and frozen daphnia and bloodworm until she appeared to be carrying eggs, at which point we were planning on adding a male to the tank and seeing what happens.

Before I go any further, the article can be found here from Yahoo! answers and here from the original website.

BUT before we put the male in the tank (after the female had got incredibly fat) we found something. Baby minnows! Ultra small (too small to photograph) tiny baby minnow. No more than a couple of millimetres in length. What had happened, we decided, was that the minnows in there previously had indeed spawned but due to the baby minnows before so absolutely small, we hadn’t seen them until a couple of days ago. They would’ve been living on bacteria in the tank. Upon spying the new arrivals we hastily moved the female back into the main tank as minnows have been known to eat babies. The new babies are being fed on liquid baby food (insuphoria) for the time being and will move onto daphnia next week. As soon as they are large enough to be seen on a photograph, I’ll be putting some up.

For now, here’s some photos of what the breeding tank now looks like:

We also got more minnows (yes more!) for the main tank. We bought 14 more from an aquarium shop as it was decided the previous shoal of 8 minnows wasn’t enough for them. They like larger shoals. We now have 22 (not counting the new babies.)

Minnow Breeding: Creating the Environment.

Kaleidoscope — Fri, 16 May 2008 22:27:20 +0000

May 16 2008: After releasing the frogs and ending up with a spare tank, we’ve decided our next mission will be to try and breed our white cloud mountain minnows. Research has told us there couldn’t be an easier fish to breed, which sounded good to us. So we redesigned the old frog tank and turned it into a breeding tank. The minnows have been transferred from the main tank and we’ve attached spawning mops to the tank (basically strands of wool tied together, creating artificial floating plants for the eggs to stick to.) We’re feeding them live food; daphnia (or waterfleas) which we’re keeping in a container and feeding them a few every day. And now all we have to do is wait and see if they really are easy to breed.

Tadpole Diary: The Timeline

Kaleidoscope — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:53:16 +0000

May 9 2008: I decided it would be useful to put up a rough timeline of important dates that this diary spans. It’s not very long but would save tralling through almost 20 posts to find the information you want.

Day 1: Collecting the frogspawn.
Day 4: The frogspawn fully hatched into tadpoles.
Day 7: The peak of their growth spurt.
Day 29: They began to grow legs.
Day 53: The first two tadpoles turned into frogs.
Day 59: They were released back into the wild.

Day Fifty-Nine: Homeward Bound

Kaleidoscope — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:49:29 +0000

April 30 2008. So after two months, with hard work, several homes and some losses, we managed to successfully raise a handful of frogspawn into fully fledged little frogs. And today, we set them free. We found that with them needing live food, we couldn’t feed them properly. It was too difficult finding live food which they could eat. Especially with having such bad whether at the moment, all the bugs were buried deep into drier wood and stuff. One of them died, we don’t know if it was from starvation or drowning (they had a worrying habit of appearing to get stuck between the tub and the wall of the tank) but that triggered the decision. We let them go in the pond on campus where I’m sure they’ll be very happy. Goodbye little frogs!

Day Fifty-Six: Redecorating and Feeding Time

Kaleidoscope — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:42:04 +0000

April 27 2008: As a third frog came along we decided we’d better give them a better home. So we did some redecorating. We decided they needed much more land than a few rocks pocking above the water so we filled a small tub with soil and placed it on one side of the tank. We then rebuilt up the rocks so they lead up to the tub so the frogs would be able to access it. A few well placed plants and a couple of pieces of wood and the tub of dirt looked quite nice!

Feeding was not so easy. We discovered that the frogs only ate live food. Somehow we thought they would eat frozen bloodworms and waterfleas. Research gone wrong I think. So we had to go bug hunting. In the rain. We got wet to say the least. But we dug up a good number of various crawlies of the creepy variety and carefully placed them into the tank (all flying bugs were avoided for obvious reasons). Unfortunately there’s no photographic evidence but the frogs did pounce on their live prey with delight! With one of them even taking on a small cockroach. It was oddly satisfying after scambling around in the dirt.

Day Fifty-Three: WE’VE GOT FROGS!

Kaleidoscope — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:22:41 +0000

April 24 2008: It happened! Two of our tadpoles have turned into frogs! And we’re expecting the rest of them to have turned into frogs by the end of the week. The frogs still have small tails but they’ll be gone soon. We’ve had the tadpoles now for around one and a half months. Not much more to say, so here’s some pictures!

Day Forty-One: Home Number Four

Kaleidoscope — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:17:54 +0000

April 12 2008: Yesterday the tadpoles were moved into (yet) another home! This time they get a tank all of their very own! It’s a lot smaller from the fish tank but it’s a nice size for them. As they’re all growing legs now we decided it was best to set up a tank which would suit them as frogs as well as tadpoles. When they become more frog than tadpole all we have to do it remove water and it’ll reveal the top of the rock pile, providing them with dry land. Genius or what! Sadly we believe we’re down to only five tadpoles, but those five seem to be doing quite well.

We’ve also given the fish tank a damn good clean and it’s come up all sparkly and amazingly clear! Photos are a tad dark and maybe blurred but hey, you try and take photos of fish tank in natural light without a tripod!

Day Twenty-Nine: The Pitter Patter of Tiny Feet

Kaleidoscope — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:41:06 +0000

March 31: No, not pregnancy – but legs! More than one of the tadpoles have begun to grown legs. One with fairly welly formed legs at this stage has been photographed (see photograph 2 below) but at least one other has been spied with the development of legs. It quite exciting! Their bodies are beginning to form inside their transparent skin. You can clearly see a split between the head and the body.

Also we have new additions to the tank: several tiny snails, which are extremely good at hiding.

Day Twenty – Life in the Tank

Kaleidoscope — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 19:12:52 +0000

22/03/2008: Not a great deal to tell at the moment. The tadpoles continue to grow but at a much less accelerrated rate then before. They’ve settled into living in the fish tank extrememly well. Unfortunately we did lose Runty earlier this week, so his companion was placed into the tank and the bucket emptied. I’m away from the tadpoles for a week but there’s hope that they will have begun to grow legs by the time I return. Watch this space!

Day Fourteen – Moving on Up!

Kaleidoscope — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:41:11 +0000

16/03/2008: All but two tadpoles are now happily making a life for themselves in the fish tank. We’ve left the runtiest tadpole (harsh but true) in the bucket because he’s so small and one other to keep him company. But the others are loving it in the tank! We’ve never seen them so active. They’re even tackling the fish! We’ve seen more tha one head butt a fish out of the way and the fish has fled. The tadpoles are having a great time. They’re eating all the algae from the rocks and sides of the tank. We reckon we’ll have froglets by the end of April.