Raising Tadpoles

On the 4th of July we went to Lake Superior where we found a lot of tadpoles in a tide-pool type of area near the lake. The kids had a blast catching them!  We brought them home in an ice cream bucket with a lid and kept them in there for a few days. Then we brought in our 20-gallon fish tank and got 5 gallons of water from the lake to add into it. We added some rocks so there would be land for when the tadpoles became frogs. Here’s a pic of our tadpoles in the ice cream bucket a few days after brining them home. They already have legs.

These tadpoles grew very quickly. The front legs started coming by the Sunday after the 4th. By the day after they had front legs, some of their tails had shrunk already and we had little tiny frogs! By today, 1 1/2 weeks later, we had 10 frogs that we released over by Lake Superior. It was really neat watching the little frogs swim around and come out of the water onto the rocks. We still have a couple of tadpoles left so hopefully they will become frogs as well. What a neat experience to watch! Here’s the rest of the pics of our tadpoles earlier this week.