Comments on: The dead frog pond

By: Jeremy Biggs

Jeremy Biggs — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:48:16 +0000

Hi Judith

Try contacting Froglife who have been running the Frog Mortality Project, with the Zoological Society of London, for some years.

I’d be interested to hear how you get on.

There is advice on the Froglife website – but if you can’t find what you want let me know and we’ll see if we can talk to the people actually doing the testing.

Jeremy

By: Judith

Judith — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:29:05 +0000

Dead frogs in summer (or winter) was something I had never encountered in 20 years of having a garden pond her in N Kent, until last summer when after a very sucessful breeding season when 200+ frogs returned, I found at least 50 dead ones from July to September in and around the pond.
I assumed this to be an outbreak of the virus that has been around since the 80s, but had up to then never affected my ponds.
I tried in vain to find really useful advice about what to do about this, and whether to start again with a new pond, but nobody was able to tell me whether this virus was only carried by frogs, or whether it was in the water/mud/or transmitted by any other means.
I did empty the pond, rebuilt and relined it, but put back all the silt, pondweed and pondlife that had overwintered in holding tanks. About 40 frogs returned, spawned and I had masses of tadpoles, but now the dead ones are appearing again. Some large, some this years tadpoles. I am desperate to know what, if anything I can do about this. The newts and other life seem unaffected as last year. Does anyone have any really useful advice to give? Does anyone know if the Frog Mortality project is still going?
Incidentally my ponds have always been topped up with 50:50 rain water and tap water, and have very dense oxygenating weed and are from 10 – 60 cm deep. Frogs thrived in my garden for 19 years.
Shall I just give up and accept it is a good pond for everything except frogs now? I would really appreciate hearing from anyone else who has had this problem.

By: Jules

Jules — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:25:48 +0000

Thanks for the advice.
I did top up the pond on Sunday. It took 10 big bucketfuls of cold tap water – the rainwater butt has been empty for weeks – to bring it up to full level. Since then (now Tuesday) thankfully no more dead ‘uns, and happy to say that I’ve seen a few little frogs hopping about in the margins too.
I think it was probably the heat of the water that was doing for them.

By: LYNN

LYNN — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:12:06 +0000

I have found up to eight frogs dead in our pond – they are always on their backs with legs stretched out. anybody know what is causing this?

By: Alison

Alison — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:22:45 +0000

Hi Jules
I topped my wildlife pond up a few days ago using the hosepipe which is something that i never do, always preferring to let the rain do the job sooner or later. But against my better judgement i did it and a couple of days later there were some dead tadpoles. No dead frogs though, and the remaining tads seem to be ok. i always leave the pond to be self sufficient like it would have to be in the wild so never add any food etc and only really intervene if any of the plants are getting too big. The garden is completely organic and the pond is about ten years old. I am really hoping that it isn’t my action of topping up with the hose that has caused these tadpoles to die. It did however remind me that last year about this same time the pond seemed to be full of tads and then there didn’t seem to be half as many. i didn’t notice any dead ones last year but they could have decayed/been eaten before i noticed them.

By the way, I only had one dead frog in the spring and all others seem to be healthy, fingers crossed. I have got newts as well.

Any comments/ideas would be appreciated.

By: helen

helen — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 09:12:12 +0000

I’m not an expert but would suggest adding some more water, preferably rainwater or put the sprinkler on so it overflows.

I had this once where I had been overfeeding tadpoles with fish food, the excess food rotted and the tadpoles/froglets were desperate to get out of the pond. Learnt my lesson

By: Jules

Jules — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:05:29 +0000

We put in a small but deep wildlife pond last spring and within 3 days had frogs move in from next door’s pond. After the big freeze I pulling 15 corpses from the pond and the water smelt BAD!
After this corpse removal, the smell went totally and we had a load of frogspawn. We have delighted at the emergence of the tadpoles, who were at the tail shrinking, legs almost fully formed stage.
2 days ago disaster struck – the pond started smelling bad and 1 dead tad-froglet was plucked from the surface.
Today I have 4 more.
Still a little live activity but greatly diminished on last week’s positively writhing pond of tadpoles.

Is it a disease?
Is it the water? This pond has no pump and is fed by rainwater only.
Any chance I can stop the rest dying?

Next door had no frogspawn this year, but then again they have no dead ones either.
Any ideas/comments greatly received.

By: carol murray

carol murray — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 17:15:49 +0000

i have found another 3 dead frogs today. i noticed on these ones they have like white fury stuff on there toes aswell. i am asking about to see if any one else local to me is having the same problems but so far nobody is.

By: carol murray

carol murray — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:32:34 +0000

hi helen, thanks for your reply. i also have been very carefull disposing of the frogs its just so upsetting to see them suffering.
we are still finding at least two a day. last year we counted around 50-60 healthy frogs so im just hoping that we dont lose them all. we even had one or two that would hop down the garden into our kitchen and they were all so used to us that our being here didnt bother them so its kind of like they are our pets. i never heard of frogs getting a desiese before. i always thought the whole pond would be affected not just the frogs. i am learning so much from this forum. thanks again for your reply its really appreciated. know i have an explanation for this suddon episode kind regards carol

By: Helen

Helen — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 09:24:47 +0000

Hi Carol

This sounds like the problem I had last year, which I put down to a disease which was carried by water (the tiny frogs from the previous year did not seem affected as they did not go in the pond).

I was extremely careful how I disposed of the dead bodies and this year everything is fine, but with obviously less frogs.

It is very distressing, as it is not an instant death and like you my frogs seemed paralysed

Helen