Invasion of the bullfrogs

I hope someone on here knows about this, internet searches are proving pretty useless.
My koi pond(with 20 or so fish at least 6 inches long) is being overran with bullfrogs. They are tearing up all of my water plants and nesting in them. I have scooped out hundreds of tiny tadpoles but there are still thousands in there at various stages. I want their numbers decreased drastically and kept in check. I do not want to use chemicals that could harm my fish.
A friend brought me a painted turtle to put in there but also has some snapping turtle eggs that she will give me when they hatch. How much will these turtles help my tadpole population? What else can I do to get rid of them naturally? How many turtles can I have in there?
Thanks!!

See what they have done to my iris plants?

i think it still looks great!! your pond is not big enough for to many turtles(however i have 0 experience with ponds).

beautiful pond! My sister has a half acre pond in her backyard, and it can deafening, the bullfrog croaking. My brother, the outdoorsman, has gone out at night, taking a flashlight to blind/stun them and uses a bb gun. Frog legs for dinner!

So physical removal is possible, aside from predatorial methods. There might be frog traps out there?

If I were a Texan Redneck I would net the Koi, then throw in a stick of explosive....if I were a Redneck

I have had this problem in the past as well. Pain in the neck, but I just net all the tadpoles out.
Make sure you get the adults. This doesn't happen every year with my ponds, but my ponds are above the ground. this might be the reason Good Luck with the removel!!

Be wary of the turtles , especially the snappers . They will eat anything they can catch and hold onto . As they get bigger , so does the size of the fish they will catch and eat !

I do not have a koi pond yet, so I haven't had to deal with this problem either. However, it would seem to me that there should be a way to manage the frogs. You may have to erradicate frogs as they get big (flashlight & BB gun). The tadpoles may need to be netted from time to time to help keep their numbers low. I have read that the tadpoles will help with removing algae. However, the tearing up of your plants may mean you'll need to net them all.... I would be afraid of adding a snapping turtle to any pond.

I do have 450G indoor pond/tank that I am changing gears with, and would like to try keeping a bullfrog in, and would be happy to take some of the tadpoles off your hands if you're up for it... where are you located? PM me if you're interested. Either way best of luck and hopefully someone with some real experience will chime in.

Thanks for all the suggestions! I used my water powered pond vacuum today and sucked up toad tadpoles by the cupfuls. Probably close to 200 in two hours. There are still tons left. I spent a few hours standing in the pond with my net and caught over 50 bullfrog tadpoles. I guess tonight I will be sitting out side on my porch with a spotlight and gun for the adults. I had to tear up most of my iris to remove all the eggs and slime.
How effect would salt be at detering future frogs from coming?

Love your pond! My grandparents have the same problem. I looked at it a couple of weeks ago and it was just FULL of tadpoles.

So I just did some reading, and read that for small ponds, you can cover it with a 3/4" or 1/2" netting to keep the frogs out. This is also the same remedy for keeping raccoons and other critters out of the pond, fishing for your koi. It would be practical with small Home Depot ponds, but a larger one like yours it may not be as practical.

Another predator for frogs besides turtles can be snakes, so be on the lookout for them.

Would a fine fishing net help speed things up? Maybe it's something that can be looked at as beneficial and just have to be controlled. Frogs do eat bugs, however some of the bugs may be beneficial to your garden LOL

Oh, maybe stock your pond with some kind of fish what would eat the tadpoles? Guessing koi don't care too much for them....

Put a large mouth bass in there. We have a 3000 Gallon pond in the backyard, our LMB gets fat off the tadpoles.

I would like to have frogs/toads in my pond. Wonder why I don't have any?

I have tons of tadpoles in my decorative 'frog ponds'. I generally don't keep goldfish in them - because I've found they eat tadpoles and mosquito larvae. I keep small fish like guppies in the frog ponds to control mosquitoes.

As for controlling the tadpoles themselves. Try some catfish.

Another little update for everybody.
I have acquired a small snapper to go along with my painted turtle now.
I did an algae treatment and sludge treatment yesterday in hopes of removing the tadpoles food source. The sludge treatment said to leave my UV sterilizer off for five days, is it going to affect the outcome of the algae remover?
I have put moth ice crystals and salt around my pond to try to deter the adults from coming back. I read that salt burns them, but they don't seem to be phased.

I agree with the catfish Idea, or some sunfish they would be able to chase things into smaller cracks and shallower areas

for an infestation like that predatory methods would not be sufficient. some extreme mad made tampering is required! i had a friend with a 2000 gallon koi pond that got overrun with frogs. he removed everything he didnt want dead in a bunch of cheap kiddie pools with pond water. and then he began to systematically drain the pond using an Indoor/Outdoor Vacuum with a big net on the output side. you get the idea

Yikes, an entire revamp. OY that's a lot of work...but what happens the next year?

I would love to have a supply of tadpoles! My crawdads wouldn't know what to do!!

heatherbw wrote:

I hope someone on here knows about this, internet searches are proving pretty useless.
My koi pond(with 20 or so fish at least 6 inches long) is being overran with bullfrogs. They are tearing up all of my water plants and nesting in them. I have scooped out hundreds of tiny tadpoles but there are still thousands in there at various stages. I want their numbers decreased drastically and kept in check. I do not want to use chemicals that could harm my fish.
A friend brought me a painted turtle to put in there but also has some snapping turtle eggs that she will give me when they hatch. How much will these turtles help my tadpole population? What else can I do to get rid of them naturally? How many turtles can I have in there?
Thanks!!

See what they have done to my iris plants?

Stop feeding the koi - they will resort to 'hunting' for food.

Since you have a supply of tadpoles the Koi will feed on those, as well as mosquito larva, dragonfly larva and other wigglies.

If the tadpoles are larger than the koi mouth(s) they will be left behind (uneaten) smaller ones and even eggs will be eaten by koi.

Bullfrogs do not tend to tear up vegetation - they eat meat not veg. If the plants are being tore out it is most likely the koi under stress, or you have a visiting predator (Like a crane) who is moving/ripping out vegetation to get at either the koi or the tadpoles.

Introducing a snapping turtle may actually be a bad idea. I have seen snapping turtles take out ducks on the surface of ponds - full grown mallards pulled under with quite a struggle, drowned than eaten my a snapper.

Wow I'm thinking about an outside pond in my front yard, I never considered that I might have frogs, cool. That would be a plus.

what i have done in the past is on the days/nights it rains do not feed the koi for a few days afterwards they will start feeding on the eggs. some will make it but most will not... at this point where you already have explosion of frogs, the best option unfortunately is to pull the koi out and completely drain the pond, wash off all the plants and anything that they can have eggs attached to. or you could remove as much as you can manually. but on any given night where it rains you will have eggs so i would just stop feeding the koi and they will eat the eggs before they can hatch. 2 weeks ago when we had 4 straight days of rain i literally had thousands of eggs. i just started feeding my koi the other day and there no eggs at all and may be 20 or so tadpoles... plus my koi have doubled in size in just 2 weeks.

Nice pond...

Snapping Turtles probably not a good idea lol...

I like the dynamite idea... but not feeding the koi would probably be best...

Be real careful of turutles in your pond.....they like fish also and fish fins which are high in protein.

Can you put a mine mesh net around your pond I know it will not help get rid of tadpole, but might keep frogs from laying new eggs.

Watch the algae control chemicals some of them can hurt pond plants even though they are "safe" for plants.

You can also try to make some traps like crab pots and use algae waffers as bait.

Lastly can you cool the pond off slowly lower the temperature down below 60 deg...you koi should be fine but tadpoles will not. Might have to buy Ice by the truck load thats a good sized pond.

Ok out of Ideas good luck and let us know how it turns out.

Here what is recomended on the web
http://www.ehow.com/how_5671637_rid-tadpoles-small-pond.html