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 of them (I think they are hiding under/behind the log):
The tadpole above is sat next to the cone-shaped snail that died. I found the snail turned upside down on the bottom of the aquarium. An hour later he was still there so I helped him get back up. He wasn’t dead then because he moved to another area of the aquarium. Eventually he turned upside down there too and discoloured, so he must have died. Good thing that so many of the snail eggs have hatched. The baby snails are tiny, perhaps 2mm in length right now, but there’s lots of them!
And more mating of the two remaining cone-shaped snails:
Little man is still king of the log but he sometimes goes into the water (I think mainly/only after I scare him by opening the aquarium lid):
I put water in a container left outside hoping mosquitos will deposit larvae there that I can then harvest, but for now I feed him dead bugs as it’s the best I can do. He’s growing because I can see his legs are longer now than on Monday. I wonder if my tadpoles are of frogs or of toads. I guess time will tell. I found this handy guide on freshwaterhabitats.org.uk to help me identify them when they are older.
