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2017... and so it begins |
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chubsta
Senior Member Joined: 26 Apr 2013 Location: Folkestone,Kent Status: Offline Points: 430 |
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Gemma - it looms like my poor tadpoles may have now suffered a similar fate..
On Friday night we had the first rain for at least 3 weeks, not much, but enough to make the ground wet so its a start. The next day I saw loads of dead tadpoles on the surface of the pond, they were basically disintegrating. There were still plenty swimming healthily though. I decided to put the fountains on to aerate the water a little and the surface almost immediately went foamy, it was like detergent had been poured in! I have just checked now and whereas before this weekend the pond was absolutely heaving with tadpoles now i am seeing just the odd one, thousands must have been killed. I guess there must have been something in the air that was brought down with the rain and into the pond, I can't think of any other explanation. I live in the middle of a village so overspray from fields is very unlikely, but the village is on the cliffs overlooking the channel and it is close enough to smell France (there are a lot of occasions where pollution from the French side of the channel has caused problems around here, and the smell of whatever they are doing can be horrendous) so it could well be something brought over at a higher altitude that the rain just happened to bring down. I am absolutely gutted, after putting the spawn into trays as suggested and having great success i was really looking forward to a bumper crop of froglets this year, hopefully a few will survive whatever has happened...
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GemmaJF
Admin Group Joined: 25 Jan 2003 Location: Essex Status: Offline Points: 4359 |
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Oh no! This is not good at all. The way you describe them disintegrating is just what happened to ours. There were one or two obviously dead and floating, but the majority just seem to disintegrate. There were signs of an ink black residue around the edge of the pond, I can only assume it was what was left of them.
I did spot one in the pond today, so some are still alive, but just the same, it went from thousands one day, to practically none left at all. I am pretty convinced we can put ours down to the field being sprayed. It seems even more worrying that the rain could bring down enough toxins from the air to kill tadpoles.
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Suzi
Senior Member Joined: 06 Apr 2005 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 1025 |
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It's that time of year when we find palmates in the overgrown parts of the garden.
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Suz
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