I'm going to cover mine with bubble-wrap next year, whether it's icy or not.
Big Kid

This lot's now covered with bubblewrap!
Big Kid

Sad to hear you and your mother-in-law had no luck with your fish tank/baby bath taddies.

Think you might be right about the frogs realising that their previous efforts have come to nothing. Maybe they're brainier than we give them credit for!

I think the secret of my pedalbin liner is probably neglect! Or, more to the point, deliberate neglect, because the taddies feed off the algae on the sides. Presumably this is because the liner is outside, so the algae just forms on there. I never feed them. I've read tales of people feeding them with cooked lettuce and other things, but mine seem perfectly healthy. I wonder if other added food pollutes the water in some way?

I have Elodea Crispa and Hornwort in there as oxygenators. I put this year's frogspawn in last year's water which I just left over the winter, but I think that was a mistake because the water started to go stagnant.

I fished out the taddies/oxygenators and transferred them for a day to another container with water taken from the pond. Unfortunately my pond water is cycling at the moment and isn't clear yet, so I couldn't just fill the liner with pond water. I swilled out the liner but deliberately didn't clean the sides, then I filled it with tap water and left it for just over a day so the chlorine could settle. I then used a small amount of the water the taddies had been kept in for a day and the rest was the new water. It seemed to work because the taddies are swimming around happily and munching on the sides!
Big Kid

I have to admit, when I have taken them indoors in the aquarium, I do replace the water with fresh pond water about twice a week. bring in a bucket of pond water and let it come up to room temprature, and then take out about half the water in the aquarium with a cup and put in the same of fresh pond water. There is also elodea. I don't clean it, and notice they really do like the algae!!

I don't think the same frogs are spawning, but different frogs may be coming to the pond at different times---we need a frog expert!! This year we had three distinct laying times in between the cold snaps over about 8 weeks, rather than have them all at the same time. So in the pond there would be about 30 frogs, rather than the 80 I counted last year. But we had more spawn than ever (I guess much of it survived due to milder weather in Devon and on really cold nights some bubblewrap). So we probably had about a 100, but not at one time. It also must have been quite stressful having warm days and then frost, so the poor guys may have been stressed--hence the poor fertilization some people have experienced?

The hothoused taddies came back into the pond when they had back legs, and I have noticed some have already turned into froglets. At present it looks as if there are no taddies left, but sometimes at night there are a huge number milling about. So they must get really good at hiding.

Goes to show we don't really know what goes on under the pond water!

The stickelback males are beginning to show their colours now--talk about a stressful life having to build the house, protect it, woo the wife, look after the eggs, and then look after the kids and stop the neighbours from eating them. Stickelback females know they are onto a good thing!

Chip