Day Ten – The Tank!

March 11 2008: I must apologise for the missing day nine. I didn’t see the tadpoles yesterday as ex-Tadpole watcher Peter locked them in his room. The tadpoles have now been moved to a more accessible area and the story can continue.

Firstly, we say a sad goodbye to our silver fantail, Kay. Kay died last night after a couple of days of illness. We didn’t know what was wrong with her and there was nothing we could do. R.I.P. Kay.

But the tadpoles however…

Once more they have grown! So much so we decided to try one out in the fish tank. He took to it straight away! We also discovered how smart they are and adapted to living with possible predators. We were bothered that the fish might try to eat him (not that they’d be able to but they could nibble his tail) but we needn’t worry. He’s a skilled hider and can easily out swim the fish when they become interested in him. Keeping an eye on him proved difficult to say the least. But I did manage to get a couple of photos of him in the tank:

In the mean time, the rest of them got moved to another bucket – this time with a filter. We also tried them out with something other than goldfish flakes: frozen waterfleas, which they seemed to like well enough.

Day Eight – Moving House

March 09 2008: We decided they were growing too big for the pyrex dish and so moved the tadpoles into their new home: a bucket. They’ve grown again, but not as much as yesterday and they’re wriggling around all over the place now! Very much enjoying the fish food we’re giving them (as well as some of the plant life we’ve decorated their bucket with). The photographs aren’t so great today – it was darker in the bucket and I couldn’t hold the camera still for the longer shutter needed.

Day Seven – Growth Spurt

March 08 2008: They’re huge! They’re massive, so much bigger than yesterday! It’s amazing how fast they’ve grown. They’re also happily eating the fish food we’re giving them. They’re a little cautious about it at first but soon discover that the food is actually food and just get on with devouring it.

Day Six – The First Feeding

March 07 2008: Today we fed them for the first time. We placed three or four goldfish flakes in the bowl. Eventually we witnessed one tadpole taking tentative nips at one of the flakes and hopefully the news that the flakes were edible spread the the rest of the group started to eat them too. They’ve grown again and lost the fluffy gills they had. They’re also much more active.

Day Five – Exploring the Bowl

March 06 2008: Much more movement today! It’s quite exciting in a way. This is the first time I’ve ever seen tadpoles so I’m finding it exciting. They’re thoroughly exploring their bowl. They’ve also grown quite a bit (I think). Better close-ups today because I changed the lens on my camera (although the redlight is from me sheilding the automatic flash when using macro mode). Hopefully we’ll be able to start feeding them goldfish flakes tomorrow.

Video Diary #1

Sit through the pictures and you’ll see a video of the tadpoles moving!

Day Four – Fully Hatched

March 05 2008: And they’ve hatched! We have witnessed movement both from the surface to the bottom of the bowl as well as some adventurous ones which made it to the other side of the bowl. They’ve developed gills (fluffy things on the side of their head – see photographs) so they can breathe underwater and have begun to eat their now unwanted eggs.

Day Three – Movement!

March 04 2008: They’ve started to wiggle. It was amazing to see them move, even if it was only curling and uncurling. That was this afternoon, by the evening they’d started to hatch! If you look carefully at the photographs below you can see how some of them are half out of their eggs now. Incredible speed at which this is happening.

Day Two – The Appearance of Tails

March 03 2008: Only a day later and already those small black blobs in goo are starting to look like something! They’ve started to stretch out and grow something which looks vaguely tail-like!

Day One – Attaining the Frogspawn

March 02 2008: Unfortunately there are no photographs capturing the amusing time we had trying to get hold of just a handful of frogspawn from the rather large clump we found in a local pond. However here is the success of our mission in their new home – a pyrex dish.