Tadpoles eating fish in pond???
stella @ stejonda wrote:
Hi everyone
I'm new here and hoping for some advice. Our pond has 7 fish in it.
Until frogs and tadpoles arrived, they seemed happy and healthy.
Since
the pond has been taken over by 11 frogs and a huge number of
tadpoles 1 fish has died, one has lost half its tail and another has
a large area on its body chewed. The tadpoles seem aggressive eaters
and I'm wondering if they are chewing the fish.
It's true that big tadpoles will eat little tadpoles but unless your
fish are tiddlers, I would have thought there was a greater likelihood
of the fish eating the tadpoles.
One possibility is that there may not be sufficient food in the pond
to support all the inhabitants and its the fish who are indulging in a
bit of canabalism. There is a magic formula about calculating the
total length of fish in the pond against the surface area of the pond.
(Something along the lines of X sq ft of surface area for every Y
inches of fish length.)
Or it could be a fungal disease affecting the fish. I doubt it is
voracious tadpoles.
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ned
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