I have tadpoles living outside in a 'natural' environment but the
food in the location is poor. I give them miner's lettuce (it looks
like mini lily pads with a flower on a stalk, it's edible for humans--
also called winter purslane or montia perfoliata). They seem to
thrive on that, they're growing pretty fast. I also give them algae
or moss from a seasonal creek that's drying up. And I give them fish
flakes mashed up with mashed miner's lettuce. They've been eating it
for 2 weeks to a month but I'm wondering if I could give them other
food items.

Does anyone know if it's safe to give tads raw potato chunks or
pieces of potato peel?

In the care pages associated with this group I saw the info aboutt
pine needles being poisonous, and thankfully so because some of the
algae I harvest from the creek is mixed with pine needles. Though
tads live in the creek, better to be safe.

I noticed a few of them began swimming or floating upside down and
unable to right themselves. There are over a hundred tads of varying
ages depending on when the eggs hatched. Of those hundreds,
relatively few have died.

I looked up the bloat problem. One survived, it's been alive for
days. I isolated it in a bowl in case it was infectious and the bloat
went down after a day, but there's a blue blotch on the tummy and I
suspect the tad's internals may have a rupture or maybe it's
herniated. It was very slow and lethargic to the point where I
thought it was dead a number of times. Then after the bloat went down
it became more active.

I dangled the bowl in the pool so it could see its mates but so that
it was isolated against hassle or injury since they might nip or
bother it. This afternoon it acted like it wanted out of the bowl,
flipping around to get out with its friends. It was deformed,
lopsided, with the tail off to one side and sunken belly on that side
as seen from above but round on the other. It seemed to swim normally
and be energetic, I felt sorry for it so I let it go with its
friends.

Most are just healthy, happy, active, inquisitive little tads. The
biggest have tiny hind feet starting. They're tree frogs and I look
forward to seeing them become frogs and go off into the woods. I
worry about the local predators, some of which are cats. But
hopefully many will survive to escape into the woods. During froglet
season (late spring throughout the summer into fall) I have to be
careful as the new frogs are so tiny they're hard to see and
sometimes come in the house. I leave water down for them now just in
case so they'll survive til I can find them and put them outside
again.

They're so cute to watch. They have a lot of personality. Some of the
things they do that I love, they eat a hole in the miner's lettuce
leaves then lay in the hole and sun themselves. It's so cute watching
them peek out. They lay in the leaves as they float like little lily
pads. Also when they come up for air they blow a tiny bubble and then
sit there peeking at me over the bubble while it's still attached to
their mouth. They nuzzle each other and nip each other, seem
affectionate with each other and one time two of them touched mouths
like they were kissing. I do food drops from a spoon and sometimes
they come up and immediately start nibbling, or they float or lay in
the food as it falls from the spoon. Their patterns are so pretty, in
the sunshine they're mottled shades of brown or olive, and seem to
get darker if the sun is high, almost black. Their tails are striped.
Their little eyes are gold with horizontal 'cateye' slits. I can see
them watching me. It's just so cute.

They range as adults in colors from kermit green with white
underbellies and face stripes, to mottled tan or gray, and dark brown
mottled. It'll be fun to see what colors they all turn out. I love
the little croaking noises of the adult males, sputtering and making
funny little 'fart' noises. This is one of the first places I've
lived that has native frogs just living wild. Sadly it's so dry here
in California that their breeding holes often dry up before the tads
can grow feet.