Tadpoles seem to be very big this year?

madpenguin

My frog spawn this year was brought from a friends garden and put in my wildlife pond where it promptly sank to the bottom and resisted all efforts to retrieve it!
It was then forgotten about and assumed no tadpoles would be forthcoming but six weeks ago there they were against all the odds!
The tadpoles seem to be much bigger this year,no legs or anything yet.
Has anyone else noticed this?

madpenguin

No-one else with big tadpoles?

Lyn

Tadpoles do funny things apparently,  they grow on but hold back from the legs stage, can be even next year. 

madpenguin

So you are saying I might have 'funny' tadpoles!!!! 

Lyn

Have you got rocks so they can get out, if conditions aren’t right they hang back with developing. 

madpenguin

Lyn said:

Have you got rocks so they can get out, if conditions aren’t right they hang back with developing. 

Plenty of places to get out.
Still early days as they are only 6 weeks from hatching.
Just never seen tadpoles this big before at this stage.

matt_fender

Funnily enough I was just reading about overwintering tadpoles. It seems they can "decide" to do it, but no one quite knows why - so could these be from last year?
Other than that food availability and water temp makes a huge difference to development rates. We took 5 eggs indoors for the kids this year, about two and a half months ago, and fed them nothing but boiled lettuce. They were grown with all four legs (and big) within a month. Most tadpoles in the pond still don't have legs..

madpenguin

Definitely this years tadpoles.New pond this year!

DampGardenMan

Ours seem about the normal size, though they're wolfing lettuce down. And one or two are showing back legs.

madpenguin

I don't feed mine anything,they just graze on the algae in the pond,must be good stuff!!

Lyn

As soon as they get legs they turn into meat eaters.