Pond Life and a Tadpole Aquarium

Following on from our Nature study, we decided to head on down to the lake armed with our Handbook Of Nature Study which held all the step-by-step instructions we needed to make our own tadpole aquarium. This proved to be a fun and easy project to put together, the most difficult part was coping with the gale-force winds that have been pummeling Britain!

Before releasing our frog-spawn into our aquarium, we noticed allot of movement happening among the spawn. On closer examination we found a rather interesting creature trying to eat our spawn. We scooped him up and popped him into isolation for observation and identification. (lots of 'ation' going on in that sentence!). Along with our ferocious little creature we found another more timid creature in our pond water, so we popped him into his own little watery container too.

Ferocious creature was identified as a Diving Beetle Larvae. They are described as 'fierce predators even in the larvae stage'. 

Our quieter visitor turned out to be a Caddisfly Larvae.

With all this interesting life coming to light, we felt we had to record our weeks findings in our nature journals...

We popped all our creatures into our aquarium - even our diving beetle larvae - so we can observe the drams's of pond life unfold before our eyes. We shall pop a little more frogspawn into our aquarium just in case. We did consider throwing our predator out, but thought that our environment should mimic nature as much as possible ;o)