I was out this morning to look at the pond. It had a thin cover of ice on top.
As I was looking down I noticed a frog on the bottom. He was alive and hid. I
have a pre-formed pond and no dirt on the bottom. Should I take the frog out or
put some dirt or sand on the bottom of the pond? I just hate the thought of
fishing him out in the spring. Ann

Ann wrote I was out this morning to look at the pond. It had a thin cover of
ice on
top.
As I was looking down I noticed a frog on the bottom.

Ann, where abouts are you in the country? Can you expect to get much ice?
We usually recommend keeping a hole open in the ice as our ponds have so much
vegetation and living critters per gallon of water than Mother Nature's ponds.
Usually it is the build up of gasses in our ponds with no way for the gasses to
vent through the ice that kills critters in garden ponds over the winter.

Frogs work by slowing down over the winter. They don't need to stay warm or
tucked up in mud. They just need not to freeze and not to be poisoned by the
breakdown of organic matter trapped in a winter pond. Organic matter would be
any dead vegetation left over from summer and fish and frog waste.

Some frogs will die over winter just as a matter of course. They could be old,
ill, injured or had a rough time of it before winter sets in.





kathy :-)
3000 gallon pond
800 gallon frog bog
home of the watergardening labradors
zone 7 SE WA state

Ka30P wrote:
Ann wrote I was out this morning to look at the pond. It had a thin cover of
ice on

top.
As I was looking down I noticed a frog on the bottom.

Three summers ago I put a little tadpole in my 500 gallon pond. He
became a tiny frog and still had some tail when he emerged. I named him
Buddy, took some photos for my page
http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/...tuff/Pond.html
and never saw him again. I figured he left for greener pastures. The
next year I put in another tadpole, named him Buddy junior, again got a
photo before he too left. Last year, yep, named him Buddy the third,
and that was it. I couldn't even consider that they were iced at the
bottom of the bottom and never defrosted; they just had wanderlust. Then
this year, workers emptied the whole other bigger pond and there were
three Buddies of different sizes. Who knows where they are now, which
pond? Moral of the story: they survive very well under the ice,
assuming there's a hole in the surface.

Ruth Kazez