The Care and Feeding of Young Frogs

We are starting the 2nd week in a row of VBS, so life has been anything but normal.  But the tadpoles have kept right on growing.  And now, most of them are not tadpoles at all.

Late last week - you can see the tail is still there, but tucked in.  Most of them at this point weren't swimming as much.

This weekend.  On their backs they have two golden stripes.  All their bellies have that funny line down them.  There are still 2 that have not completely changed.  One has not changed at all.  It also seems to have only one eye.  I don't know what to expect of it.

Our habitat - You can see all the little frogs on the back wall :)  (Annalise would have said "You can notice...")

And so feeding these little froggies suddenly became an issue.  I told Caleb we can keep 2 long term (i.e. until we make a serious mistake with them and they do not survive our care and feeding), but the rest will have to be relocated.  It became clear that they were not interested in fish food any longer.  So we have started catching mosquitoes to feed them - they like them live.  "Fortunately" catching mosquitoes is like shooting fish in a barrel.  The hard part is getting them into the tank without letting them go again.  It turns out that you can stick your newly caught mosquito in the freezer for about 1 minute and then you can move it just about anywhere.  They wake up pretty quickly though.  If you leave them too long...well they don't wake up at all!  To move them, we put all of the sleeping ones in a yogurt cup and quickly stick in on the water surface like a little boat.  We're doing this only once a day b/c if there are lives ones inside, they fly out.  All that said - that black speck on the mesh, is a mosquito

 

 

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And of course a perfect habitat for raising baby frogs is also a perfect habitat for raising baby mosquitoes.  It looks like we won't have to catch mosquitoes in a few days!  These are in the larval stage.