I purchased this for a ten year old girl who has spent hours playing around ponds and catching frogs. At first this was entertaining - the frogs arrived in good health and we watched them gradually lose their tales and develop legs. However, once that process was completed, there was little other enjoyment. The frogs are sedentary, and once the tadpole food is finished, they required live crickets to sustain them, which of course required the investment in a form of cricket habitat and their food supply, which meant weekly runs to the pet store and hoping that they had small live crickets. The average life span is five years and as they are captive animals, cannot be released into the wild with any probability of survival. I would definitely pass on this...the month of enjoyment is not worth the 5 years of maintenance and cricket keeping.

I purchased this item, and then ordered my tadpoles from Uncle Milton online. The tadpoles arrived last January in styrofoam containers, and they were fine and alive. It took 3-4 months for the tadpoles to develop into frogs, and get their legs, and move out of the water. Weekly cleaning was required to clean the tank, but it took all of 5-10 minutes. I would definitely recommend if your child loves amphibians.

I agree with previous reviewer that the plastic is flimsy; I recommend to others to buy some other clear, flat container and add rocks and stuff to provide hiding places for the tadpoles and dry land spots for the frogs. You can go to the Uncle Milton site and buy the tadpoles without having bought this container. It is an overpriced identical twin to the Planet Frog container I bought for $19.99 in December.

I was shocked when I opened this up for my son at Christmas. I am not talking about thick, slightly durable plastic of most toys. I am talking about the thin, moveable plastic that is usually reserved for the see-through windows of boxes. Every inch of this is made of that kind of plastic, not just the "viewing" window. You also need to make sure that it is in the correct spot when you fill it with water. If you try to pick it up when filled, it will bend and twist and make you fear for the life of your carpets. And to top it all off, you need to pay $6 for the tadpoles and then still wait almost 6 weeks for it to arrive. Time to teach your children the lesson of patience, folks. Or the business savvy technique of taking back your worthless purchases or, better yet, not buying cheap crap to begin with. This lesson of course, is what I would reccommend.