Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have two mailorder Leopard Frog tadpoles that just aren't changing.
I have had them for so long that their food ran out.
I picked up some fish food like the directions mention but they aren't touching it...

Any tips you all can offer to get them eating and hopping?

boil up some spinich and feed them that. it may cloud the water more quickly than other foods but I've had gread success with it including Leopard Frogs. In the wild one might expect a Leopard Frog to metamorphose in a few months at most but in captivity that time period can be manipulated quite easily and quite by accident. If your water is too cold it will take the tadpoles longer to change and if they are not getting enough food it can also take much longer. I once had a Green Frog tadpole in my fish tank for 4 years -- it was just eating goldfish flakes that my goldfish missed. Try the boiled spinich and try to feed them just enough so that within a couple hours of feeding most of the spinich is gone. most likely since you just have two that may mean tearing off a square inch of leaf, boiling it, and then giving them part of that but you can fine tune as you go along. if the water becomes cloudy, change it. good luck!

I'm in a similar situation to yours. I rescued about 15 southern leopard tadpoles from a pond that was just about dried up. Some changed into frogs in a few weeks, and some are taking much longer. I'd say I got them in early to mid-July, and it is now almost the end of August and some only have legs and one or two are still tadpoles. From what I read online, some may take months to change. I did read about some environmental factors that may impact the speed of their changes, such as the number of other tadpoles in the same space, but nothing that I could recommend for you to try.