The ponds gone back to clear again now! I’d be interested if anyone else had seen such rapid transitions during the summer.

I think the taddies just temporarily overwelmed the pond – now a few have metamorphosed (and some become backswimmer dinners!), they’re not having the same impact.

By the way I really think they were eating live mosses – which struck me as a bit unusual, though maybe they were actually grazing algae growing on the mosses. The mosses they were attacking (I use the word advisedly!) are still alive, though looking threadbare.

Tadpoles need warm shallow water to be able to develop into frogs quickly – green water is over come by allowing aquatic plants grow and shade the water thus preventing the algae from blooming – People often clean out green soup ponds and reset the balance to clean fresh water only to find green algae again.

Tadpoles will eat most dead matter – animal or plant – so as the mosses died back so they fed on this material – the abundance of tadpoles may have stirred things up and provided nutrients into the water.

I wouldn’t worry about the tadpoles sounds like they are doing their job feeding the other inhabitants of the pond