Last year when the winter thawed I found maybe half a dozen frogs that
had frozen to death in the stream for my pond. It's only about a foot
deep there and that was the first year I'd had this pond so I didn't
see the harm it letting it freeze over. Interestingly, there were
several small goldfish that survived the winter up there by going into
the lowest cracks and crevices underneath the big rocks. The fish
shouldn't have even been up there, but they took a wild ride as fry
through the skimmer pump and out the waterfall and continued to live
there. Anyway, by halfway through the summer the frogs were back in
force. By late summer tadpoles were all over the place.

This year I decided to keep the stream running all winter. It seems to
have helped a lot with the water quality and with the winter-thaw
algae. I've already spotted 3 frogs (quite alive) and many many
tadpoles. Just standing in one place in the stream with a flashlight
last night I spotted 12 tadpoles without any effort at all. We don't
have neighbors within frog-range and we actually like the noise, but
wow there look to be a lot on the way.

Dave