Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Wildlife Management 100's of dead frogs

About 45 days ago I had hundreds of bull frog tadpoles piping in the pond and then I wound up with at least 500 young bull frogs in the pond and along the pond banks. I could not believe the number of frogs.
Update, I now have hundreds of dead frogs along the bank and floating in the water. Some have missing legs, front or back legs. Some just look like they hopped up on the bank and died. So many that there is a stench in the air when you are close to these dead frogs. I still have maybe 200 along the bank that seam to be healthy. So any ideas why the frogs are dying?
The fish seam fine, no floaters and the crawfish seam fine also, still see them walking on bottom of the pond. There are 2 to 4 Black Heron birds that visit the pond most every day along with at least 30 Wood Ducks everyday (going from fish feeder to fish feeder when they go off) Along with some other flight ducks that are resting on the pond some days. There are coon tracks along the bank everyday. I would understand it if the frogs were eaten but most of the dead frogs look like they just died without any devastation to their body's. Any ideas what has caused this? has anyone ever seen this before? Possible disease?

PS, the big bull frogs seam to be doing well, have seen no big frogs dead.

Tracy

Sounds like they overate their food source, and succumbed to possibly a pathogen that may be normally present that causes no problem, unless the host is stressed. In this case starving was the stressor. Nature's way of thinning the herd.

OTOH bullfrogs have been known to transfer pathogens to other susceptible native species, which is why there was a moratorium on selling bullfrogs in my area. Not sure if it's still in effect.

Had a massive tadpole dieoff one year. Never happened again.

No bass in the pond? Usually they are quite effective at thinning frogs.

Maybe they are Texas Croakers instead of Bull frogs.

Bob-O, Texas Croakers, U might be right.
Cecil, I also thought they might have starved, but was thinking they eat everything including each other. And I am hoping I have lmb but have yet to see one, or catch one. And beginning to wonder if there are any in the pond.

Tracy

They do eat each other, that's for sure.
We drained and cleaned out a tiny pond on a friends place on time.
It was down to maybe 30x20 a few feet deep.
All that was in it was bull frogs and tadpoles.

As the water went down the bull frogs feasted on all the tadpoles.
It was funny to watch the last bull frogs too stuffed to move.
Literally burping up tadpoles before being able to slowly hop away.

I had a complete and massive loss of leopard frogs this spring. Every one that hopped in the pond, died. Nothing else did, and the tadpoles and bullfrogs were fine.
I had to remove two 5 gallon buckets of dead frogs to get the organics out of the pond.

Are the missing legs from predation or look like birth defects?

Amphibians are known as the "canary in the coalmine" of aquatic systems. They absorb water through their skin so they are way more susceptible to all sorts of pollution. A huge percentage of amphibians are endangered, critically endangered, or extinct for this reason, more than any other class of animals (class Amphibia). A major factor is birth control building in water. Modern waste management systems can't take it out so it builds in public waters where waste water is disposed. It actually turns the male amphibians into females so they go extinct.

This is probably not the case for your water, as far as birth control is concerned. But the line about missing limbs makes me wonder if you some have some kind imbalance or pollution in your pond. I know phosphate's can affect amphibians so alot of farm run off could be an issue.