On 1/4/07 12:25, in article
, "Sally Thompson"
wrote:

On Sun, 1 Apr 2007 10:47:50 +0100, Sacha wrote
(in article ) :
snip have had some adults but I did not realise they
would take spawn.

We're assuming that's what happened, though nobody actually saw it happen.
Ray saw the heron on the front lawn by the new pond there but while it could
grab any fish silly enough to swim to the edge, there's no way it could wade
into that pond. Next morning when he went out to the 'old' fishpond he
chased the heron off, all the fish had gone into hiding and a very large
clump of spawn was missing, so the evidence piles up. ;-)

We have the opposite experience :-) An absolutely bumper year for frogspawn
and hundreds of tadpoles all milling round now, and we have seen toadspawn
this year for the first time in this pond.

Do you have wild ducks in the area Sacha? In our experience they will come
for a tasty breakfast when the frogspawn is around, and they may be the
culprits. We protected our frogspawn by a corrugated plastic sheet just laid
over the edge (not touching the water in other words) and held down with
bricks overnight when a bad frost was forecast, and now have a piece of
chicken wire again just over the edge to protect them from ducks. Once they
swim away from where they have hatched, they will have plenty of places to
lurk.

No, I've never seen wild ducks round here and our Call Ducks took themselves
off last year and haven't returned, so they're not to blame! The only thing
we can do fish-wise is move some to the other pond and take some tads, if we
find any, to the wildlife pond that has no fish. That's where the ducks
used to be and we decided to make it a fish free zone! I'm surprised no
frogs or toads have spawned in that but perhaps they take some time to learn
where a new pond is.

Your fish may of course also be the culprits; we have no fish in our wildlife
pond to predate on the spawn or tadpoles.

We're pretty sure the fish are what eats the tads because there isn't really
anything else to do it. On top of the other the fish stocks have increased
a lot since I first knew this place 8 years ago. They're obviously very
happy and breeding well. But at one time there would be scores of tads at
the edge of the pond, nibbling away at the weed. ;-(
--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
http://www.discoverdartmoor.co.uk/
(remove weeds from address)