Australia's Science Forum

G'day again.
Can anyone help me with a newly developed Pobblebonk Frog?
We have stupidly let a tadpole develop into a frog and of course, don't know how to look after it. We are feeding it baby crickets, but it looks freezing and I am worried that it won't last too long under its current care.
What do we do? Please help.
Maree

A water temp warmer or VERY low wattage globe placed at a distance from it on a timer will do nicely. You can get speciallist ones of these from reptile suppliers but these will do the job at a much lower cost.

They slow down a bit when cool but it won't harm them unless it's an Afghan marching frog or Giant East Coast Farting Toad.

We keep ours for about 4 weeks after they turn into frogs then release them on the Ag Farm where they we're found.

Maree,

I think you might be better releasing it from wherever the eggs/tadpoles were collected. Having said that we have quite a few reptile books at home that I could look up for you if you needed to hang on to it for a few days.

If you wanted to keep it indefinitely you would probably need to get a reptile keepers licence from the appropriate authority in Vic. We have to be licenced in NSW to keep any reptiles or frogs.

Cheers
Judy

A GIANT EAST COAST FARTING TOAD!!!- i want one of those.

Thank you for your help. The tadpoles came from my own home. I have approx. 40 in a pond at various stages of development. Of course, a teacher wanted me to bring in some. Lo and behold, I brought in 2 and one survived to frogdom. So the situation arose, "What do we do now?" Change that to, "What do I do now?" because we know teacher just wants the frog, you sort it out Maree.
We do have a licence because our junior school has green tree frogs. This would be just food for them. I don't like that!
Anyhow, I have been feeding them crickets and today, on your advice, I have bought a lamp.
It seems that I will get there, possibly in very small steps.
Thanks again.
Maree

Maree - can you not get the same set up for your frogy that your lower school have ? Or if you are not wanting to keep it - take it home where you got it form and release it back into the environment it came from?

I know our CALM guys here in WA are really good for answering questions so maybe you could ring them and ask them soem questions on it or a reptile shop

Mind you i would keep it cause i love froggies

Came in this morning to find my male common Marsh frogs 'bokking' away merrily for the 1st time this season which means they are after a mate. Half an hour later - frogspawn! Blimey they don't muck about. We'll have loads of tadpoles to release in the next few weeks.

In the lower piccy you can just see Mrs frog still there laying eggs in the shelter of the tube.

I have just collected some eggs from the pond on the ag farm on Friday and did a bit of reading. If you don't want to keep the frog make sure you return it to where it came from. I'm hoping our little tadpoles hatch. I have 2 so far... They've had a hard short life being carried in a bucket by the kids... I have a question about them though. In the things I read, it said if you collect tadpoles, then you need to collect some underwater plant life, but not if you collect eggs... does this mean when the eggs hatch I need to get some plant life? Or is the fishfood enough for them? We are only keeping them for the junior school to watch them start to develop then they will be sent back to the pond as we don't have a licence and I read that you can keep up to 20 without one as long as you don't let them completely develop into frogs.

Pond slime is the staple diet of the tadpole. They will take fish flakes but only in very small amounts. Lettuce boiled till it's soft is a better option. Find a slimey pond if you can and collect a litre or two. Keep it on a window ledge (not in direct sunlight) and it will grow - giving you year-round food for your wrigglers.

A reminder Rosalie that as soon as they start developing their rear legs you are to release them as they are no longer classed as tadpoles - you will need to obtain a licence from NSW Parks & Wildlife to keep them any longer.

Thanks Richard. Yep, they will be released before the school holidays whether they have developed any legs or not! Stage 2 (years 3 and 4) are looking at lifecycles over the next few weeks. I have no intention of starting a frog farm!! I'll just go with the fish flakes and hope for the best.
Rosalie

if you boil up lettuce to a pulp theywill eat that also - we used to keep taddies alive on that alone - you do need to make sure you get lout what they dont eat after 6 hours others wise the water gets really smelly very quickly

good luck

As the person who originally needed help with this topic, I thought it was about time for an update.
Our little frog has survived. I did take it home the last school holidays and it grew enormously under my care (no noisy classroom) and stable environment. I will take it home again these holidays and release it to our front garden with the pond where the eggs were first laid.
Not my backyard because we have wild blue tongues there and I do not want my frog eaten! I can't bear to think of that!
Froggy is now, with legs stretched out, about 2 1/2 inches long. He is beautiful.
So, thank you for all your help.
Maree

That's great Voice! Always good to see a happy posting regarding frogs. Named it yet?

I have not such a happy story... I put my eggs out in the sun because the water was rather cold sitting in the prep room. Didn't think it would hurt to warm them up a bit... Well, I put them around the side of the building where the kids wouldn't notice them. Unfortunately the maintenance man noticed them and thought it was out for rubbish! So, no more eggs :( And off I went to collect some more. I couldn't find any eggs but there were plenty of little tadpoles swimming around in the pond so I collected 20 and tried again. I did the hand over to the junior school teacher who wanted them and highlighted the important bits in the info I had pointed out to her and also hand wrote a list of things to do. I went off to Qld for a week (for a wedding) and got a text while I was there saying they'd all died. One of the students had a semi-formed frog at home which they brought in so the kids at least got to see a live one at an interesting stage of life. Oh well. Can't say I didn't try!!

That is bad news Rosalie. I tend to just leave mine alone and only view them occasionally and feed them every few days (oh and take happy snaps of them when they feel like smiling). They seem happy enough. Good on you for trying though.

I had bad news from my HT Sunday night - we had a break-in and all my beautiful glass fish tanks in my labs have been destroyed along with my large stock of native fish and yabbies - most of which i bred myself.

Came in this morning to be greated with over 600 litres of water through my labs, preproom and ajoining classrooms plus a massive amount of other science equipment and computer gear smashed to bits. I don't know where to start.

The marine research centre (thankfully) is untouched along with my frog tank here in my prep room.

I was flying to Brisbane next saturday for the 2 week school holidays but I have too much here to rebuild to think of that.

Hi Richard,
I'm so sorry to hear your news. That must have been devastating.
You should set Brian on to them!!

All the best
Lorrae

Oh Richard - that's terrible news! I can only begin to imagine how you must be feeling...
What a a year!!

Just hope there's plenty of help available with cleaning up. And to help with the next step in 'rebuilding'.

My thoughts are with you. So sad ...

That is really awful!!! If there is something that upsets me (appart from evil teachers) it is when idiots (people) hurt animals, vertebrates or invertebrates! They are poor innocent defensless creatures... that is with the exception of brian offcourse... and... and it really shits me when animals get hurt for no apparent reason. I certainly hope they catch whoever did that to you. And dont let this stop you from going on your holiday, you probably need it after this more than anything

Many, many, many yards of sympathy for you RIchard... I hate that feeling of violation that break-ins create. I would have no doubt if we all lived near you we would be there to help you clean up and set things right. The best we can do is keep you in our thoughts and hope the perpetrator/s are caught quickly. Some days make you want to spit!
Lou.

So sorry to hear your news richard. It's events like this that make us think "why bother" as it's usually kids from the school that break in and destroy things. I cringe whenever a teacher wants fish tanks set up in the classrooms as I know there will always be some idiot who destroys it.