Frog Pond

Original fibre glass pond

Now with plants fully grown

A couple of years ago we visited an open house permaculture garden in Port Kemba.  This was where we got the inspiration to replace the lawn with woodchips.  The people who lived here were modern day hippies.  It was a lovely garden.  Chickens in a huge run.  Garden beds everywhere and a frog pond which was a huge garden urn filled with the run off from a water tank.  The urn had fish to eat mosquitoes, tadpoles and water lilys.  The house up from theirs was the same with no fence between them.  This no boundary between the two houses made for more possibilities to garden and share resources.  An idea which would be totally foreign where we lived.

We went home and decided that the fibre glass in ground fish pond which was left by the previous owners would be perfect to put in the ground to make a frog pond.  This in ground pond was previously in a shed up the back which we fixed up for the chickens.  What its purpose was in the shed was a mystery to us.  We had seen a couple of frogs around the garden but they were a rare sighting.  As rare as our sightings of the blue tongue lizard are.  We see this lovely creature every now and then and wouldn't have a clue where it resides.  Every time we think it has disappeared for good it makes a brief appearance.

Back to the frog pond.  We dug a hole deep enough for it to be level when filled with water.  We surrounded the fibre glass edges with sandstone rocks.  Planted native grasses around it.  Filled it with rainwater and put in white cloud minnows which we purchased from the local indoor fish man.  [When I can work out how to put up photos on this blog I will put before and after pictures.] 

Then we waited, and waited and waited.  No frog noises.  We kept on waiting as we could do nothing else.  It is not advisable to bring in frog spawn from anywhere else as only the local frogs native to the area are recommended.

One night, many months later, we heard the frog.

One morning there was frog spawn in the pond.

Then tadpoles.

The tadpoles grew and grew and we sighted a couple of small frogs around the pond.

The white cloud minnows were multiplying and the frogs kept mating.  All was rosy in the frog pond until this year.

There has been plenty of spawn but not a tadpole in sight.  I have even taken the spawn out of the pond and waited for the tadpoles to hatch and grow some before I put them back in the pond only to disappear also.  I don't know what is wrong.  I have taken half the minnows out and given them to my son in case they were eating them.  I asked the aquarium man if he had heard of the minnows eating spawn and tadpoles and he said in the 20 years he has been selling fish it is new to him.

I have searched the net to no avail.  Once more I have a problem on my hand.  The good news is that the minnows are very happy and the pond is looking really beautiful now the grasses have matured and hang over the pond giving the necessary shade in summer.