UKC

I have had some newts in my pond and was luckily enough to see them spawning over the last few weeks. I could even see the whit eggs on the weed. The adults appear to have moved on now. I was wondering when I should start to see the tadpoles. It feels a little too long now..

Is there any chance that my growing population of leeches may be destroying the eggs. The leeches can be found on the weed, wiggling around. These are about 3-4 cm long, light brown and flat. They swim with an undulating motion. Im not sure what they are feeding on, as there are no fish in the pond, and they ignored my frog tadpoles

In reply to kipper12:

How big is the pond? Newt tadpoles are quite hard to spot. That said, I can clearly see almost full-grown efts conspicuously hanging in mid-water in the deeper parts of my large pond. They are starting to practice air breathing and seem to like being close to the surface.

The eggs will have long hatched by now, if they were going to. The leeches you describe could be carnivorous, although I've never seen them attack tadpoles. If they are Dina lineata they mostly eat invertebrates but if there are lot of them and not much food...

The main danger to mine is certainly the large population of large dragonfly nymphs and even larger Dytiscus larvae. The other day I found two of these fighting over an adult golden-ringed dragonfly that they had presumably managed to grab as it emerged - all very alien vs predator!

In reply to Dave Garnett:

The pond is about 1.2 m across and at its deepest, about 0.75m, so I may well not be seeing them. Ive not seen any dragonfly nymphs, or Dytiscus larvae. I will just keep my fingers crossed