What Do Tadpoles Eat?

Tadpoles like to eat lettuce and boiled spinach.

Do you have some new tadpoles to care for? Perhaps you have been looking for what tadpoles eat. Lettuce leaves! It is very important that your tadpoles eat enough food each day. They are tiny little things but require some care. If you feed them too much, their water may turn out to be dirty and thus constitute some health risks for your precious tadpoles.

Unlike other foods that can be bought, it does not cost much to get lettuce and you can prepare the food yourself. While tadpoles love eating lettuce, you are not expected to just take some lettuce leaves and throw them into the tadpoles’ tank. Those are too big for them and they won’t even take a bite. This needs to be boiled for ten to twenty minutes. This is meant to soften the leaf. After that, you will chop it up into little pieces.

It is always better to prepare the food in large quantities so you don’t have to keep preparing food everyday. Once they have been chopped, you will then have to put them in the freezer. When the food is cooled, bring out a measured quantity, depending on the number of tadpoles you have in the tank and feed them. Put the rest in a bowl and store it in the freezer. Feed this to them daily until they start to turn into frogs.

Remember that hungry tadpoles feed on one another. If your tadpoles suddenly begin to disappear, then know that you are not giving them enough food. On the other hand, if the water in the tank starts getting too dirty, then you are probably over-feeding your tadpole.

Tadpoles or frog spawn eat a variety of foods tadpoles have been known to eat foods like lettuce, fish food, egg yolk and even baby cereal. A tadpole starts feeding a few days after it is born typically when it starts growing legs until which it feeds on its own egg yolk and does not need to be fed externally.

Once it has grown sufficiently it starts feeding on mainly algae if it is in a pond and may even eat its own kind if sufficient food is not available for example in a tank.

Tadpoles are known to eat lettuce though one would do well to boil and freeze any before feeding them solidified egg yolk and fish food can also be utilized. Ideally tadpoles should be fed two pinches of food twice in a day after eight hours taking care not to dirty the water too much.

Also one would do well to change the water only after the tadpoles have sufficiently grown in to froglets, indicated by the disappearance of their tail.

We raised some tadpoles and we fed them frozen boiled lettuce from the time we got them, until the time we released them into a pond. We only had one tadpole that didn't survive, so what we were feeding them, must have worked.

If you boil lettuce you spoil the taste and nutrients... To get tadpole food or any extraneous matter out of it wash the lettuce leaves in saline (salt and water) solution but do this shortly before you consume it or the solution will cause the leaves to wilt and the lettuce will loose it's attractiveness.

I own tadpoles that live in a tub in my front garden and they are starting to grow their legs. I feed them sweet corn every 2 days because every day I give them 5 flakes of fish food.

Once you see their legs starting to form as little bumps they will want to eat more protein - that is the time to put a few fish food granules in, or a few little pieces of ground meat, what we call mince in the UK.  If you feed them daily they will not bother their little brothers and sisters.

Tadpoles start out eating their own yolk sacks.  Once that's exhausted they are completely vegetarian, eating algae, plants and other microscopic things in the water.
When their back legs emerge, within a short period of time they turn into complete carnivores.  They will indeed eat each other if not enough microbes/insects/other small animals that are in the water.
They quite like mincemeat, but don't leave uneaten bits as it may poison the water.

Well, that's easy, because I have 3 frog tadpoles that look like the pic above and a couple of small black toad tadpoles. When they r small they eat boiled lettuce. You boil the lettuce for 15 minutes and then dry it out. Finally, you freeze it. When your ready to feed them, take the lettuce out of the freezer and let it thaw out.  It is just like algae. It makes great food. When they grow up go to your local pet shop and by crickets. Hope that helped!!! ☺

Boil lettuce, not iceberg, then freeze it, then boil it, then freeze it, then boil it, then let it cool. The more you do this the more mushy it will get and the more the tadpoles will like it.

Well, I have raised tadpoles myself and figured out that all you have to do is continually replenish the water so it stays cool. You do this because it will greatly help the growth of algae. Your tadpoles will eat the algae and keep your tank clean.

Tadpoles eat algae and egg yolks. They love to eat boiled lettuce!

Trust
me, I'm not a kid, I am a scientist trying to help you understand the
basics of taking care of a tadpole, and your future frog. I hope I
helped you!

They are generally herbivorous, eating algae and plants, depending on the tadpole breed. Some of them can be omnivorous and will also eat other tadpoles when they might be available. Talk to a pet shop and see what they might recommend, because this tadpole will develop into a frog, and it's diet will most likely change. Hope this helps, good luck.

And be prepared - some tadpoles eat other tadpoles! If you notice this happening, you must remove the meat-eaters and set them free, because they will consume all the vegetarian tadpoles. In the wild, this doesn';t happen so much because the tadpoles spread out, but in captivity, the carnivore tadpoles have no other meat to eat except their brothers and sisters!

They also like nettle powder......not sure how much they need at one time?

They eat algae, mostly that green slimy stuff you see on top of ponds it has to stay wet or it dries up and they wont eat it, or you can probably get those algae tablet from walmart, for the algae eater fish.