Alex van der Wateren

So, it’s been a while, mainly because nothing too exciting happened. The toads (?) have all been released so it was just snails living it up in my aquarium. This will be my final post on this topic as I released all the snails a couple of days ago! The three conically-shaped snails that I… Continue reading Tadpoles (08) – Snail freedom

The last few tadpoles have surfaced so I released them: Many of the snail eggs have hatched and right now I can easily see dozens of tiny snails, so perhaps there are over 100 in total right now. Some smaller than others, and in the larger ones you can start seeing the patterning on the… Continue reading Tadpoles (07) – Snail world

In the past two days, a couple other frogs have started to appear. I think they are all larger than Little Man, but they do still have a remnant of their tail. Last night I had three in total and realised that I wouldn’t be able to feed them anything interesting. And as Little Man… Continue reading Tadpoles (06) – Freedom

It’s been five days since discovering Little Man and none of the other tadpoles have metamorphosed that far yet. The tail of at least one of them is starting to lose pigment and they all seem to be sort of sluggish: they used to swim around quite actively and now I can’t even see most… Continue reading Tadpoles (05) – Snail death

Super exciting news! I was gone for four days. When I left, all tadpoles still looked like tadpoles: a grape-shaped body with a long tail, and I think they all already had hind legs but I didn’t see front legs on any of them. I gave them plenty of food hoping they would survive my… Continue reading Tadpoles (04) – Life on land

Exciting times! I contacted the Freshwater Habitats Trust to ask about the snails I’ve got after I took a look on their page on snails. They told me my snails are not the endangered Glutinous snail but could be the Acute Bladder snail (Physella acuta). ‘Spiral snail’ might be Margined ram’s-horn or the Keeled ram’s-horn snail… Continue reading Tadpoles (03) – Egg bonanza

So, after a day or two since setting up the aquarium, the cloudiness of the water mostly disappeared and the colour of the water has been the same since (my guess is that the ‘good bacteria’ solution is the culprit). I bought a small water plant to make the tadpoles feel more at home, and… Continue reading Tadpoles (02) – Snail social life

I collected a few small tadpoles from a local river because I am keen to see the tadpoles develop into frogs. I also took a few snails. They live in a 25L aquarium until the tadpoles are too mature to stay: I aim to release them back at the site I found them. It’s challenging… Continue reading Tadpoles (01) – Beginnings