Need To Repair Pond, But Have Frog Spawn

[Littlemonkey]

We need to do some repair work to our moulded pond. My other half was starting to lower the level to start drying out the area to be worked on when he came across the frog spawn. Can i safely remove the spawn and put it in a bucket or bowl till after the work has been done, then put back. I dont want to harm or destroy the spawn as I want to encourage more frogs in the garden (slug munchers). I seem to remember keeping frog spawn in jam jars when I was a kid and watching them hatch, but maybe not the kindness thing to do. Can anyone advise?

 

[saltynay]

Fill a bucket with pond water then use a large bowl to scoop out all the frog spawn placing them in a bucket. Take the bucket inside your house or an insulated outhouse and leave to hatch if they turn milky coloured then they have got too cold and will die. You can feed them on infusoria or daphnia, if you setup the daphnia colony soonish then you should be able to have a thriving colony by the time the tadpols hatch, I would set up 3 buckets for the daphnia so that you have enough to have stable food for everyday for the tadpols. Fish LOVE tadpoles and so your pond will need to be heavily planted before you can reintroduce them and they will need to be fairly large. I believe it may be illegal to remove frogspawn or change there environment as you can't tell the species from the eggs, however we won't tell if you don't and its for a humane reason. Birds/snakes and fish will all eat the eggs however not normally in sufficient quantities to be worried about them.

I currently know of 4 spawning pairs of frogs in my pond atleast I assume they are pairs given what it looks like they are doing and still haven't had any frogspawn mystery also have several newt pairs but haven't seen any eggs scattered yet. In summary newt spawn is individual eggs normally under vegetation, toads have ribbons of spawn and frogs have the large round clumps.

 

[Littlemonkey]

Thanks for that, I'm off for three days now, will give it a go.

 

[chesterscot]

to find out more or for any other questions check out www.froglife.org its a uk society wich looks after our native amphibians
they will bend over backwards to help you
regards scot

 

[Littlemonkey]

Well guy's, we didn't need to remove the spawn in the end and we have have another two lots in the pond, so maybe the repair work has done it's job. Thanks for the advice though. Looking forward to the little wriggler's