How to Keep Frogs (And Other Unwanted Critters) Out of Your Pool

If your peaceful oasis turns into a cacophony of croaking when the sun goes down, you need to learn how to get rid of frogs in your pool area. While a moderate amount of frogs can lend your backyard a bit of natural appeal and even provide benefits for your family and pets, too many can easily become a nuisance. While a pool safety cover can help you control access to the water, there are more steps you can take to maintain your swimming pool’s cleanliness, restore your peace, and create a safer swimming pool area for your loved ones and the wildlife that lives in or visits your neighborhood. 

Frogs Love a Welcoming Pool Area

You’ve worked hard to create the best backyard oasis for your personal enjoyment, but it can look pretty welcoming to wildlife too. Understanding how to get rid of frogs in your pool starts with understanding what they look for. Like all animals, frogs want a comfortable place to find food, water, and shelter, where they can settle down to procreate. Your pool area provides ample water, attracts some of their favorite food species, offers the plentiful and sheltered water needed for procreation, and if unkempt, there are plenty of places in your backyard where they can hide from predators and the elements. Unfortunately, these guests can come with a host of complications for your pool and the swimmers who use it.

How Frogs Can Ruin Your Pool Experience

In childrens cartoons, these happy-go-lucky amphibians might sing, dance, or use their powerful croaks as music for a jaunty tune. In real life, they can make poor houseguests as their numbers swell, making how to get rid of pool frogs a necessary skill for any pool owner. Before we look at swimming pool safety covers and other preventative steps, it’s important to make sure the steps you take reflect the issues you’re trying to avoid.

• Frogs Carry Bacteria -Frogs can carry a range of bacteria and other contaminants into your pool, most notably Salmonella. While you treat your pool to help control biological threats, such as bacteria, too many frogs can easily overwhelm these chemical systems, leading to a potential infection.
• Your Pool Makes The Perfect Place to Lay Eggs – Frogs lay their eggs in water, where they will soon hatch into tadpoles before growing into more frogs. They prefer sheltered water, like dead spots in your pool, but when current hits them, they can be swept away from a wall to float on the surface of the pool and into your pool’s skimmer and circulation system.
• They Can Damage Pool Equipment – While frogs aren’t going to wreck your pool furniture or fixtures, they can easily create problems that clog your circulation system with leaves, twigs, eggs, and even the bodies of frogs that find their way into your pool but can’t get back out.
• Frogs Can Disturb the Tranquility of Your Home – A few croaks hanging in the air on a moonlit night can be incredibly restive. A hundred croaks at 1 AM when you’re trying to sleep can leave you bleary-eyed in the morning, impacting studies, work, and your day-to-day life.
• They Can Endanger Your Pets or Kids – While most frogs are relatively safe to be around as long as you take care and wash your hands after any physical contact, pets and small children may be at a heightened risk. Some frogs–and their close cousins, the toad–can be toxic if over-handled, licked, or bitten by a human or pet. 

How To Get Rid of Frogs in Pools

The key to getting rid of frogs is preventing them from setting up shop in your pool area and the pool itself. This not only protects your loved ones and your pool but also the frogs themselves. Their bodies weren’t meant for pool water. Saltwater pools can be lethal to some frogs relatively quickly, and while they better withstand the chemicals used in freshwater pools, they can still suffer long-term harm.  Beyond a natural desire to save their lives by focusing on prevention over eradication, it also helps ensure you’re using methods that will be safer around children and pets, reducing the risk of injury.

• Keep Your Backyard Clean and Clear -Make sure to keep your lawn neatly trimmed and pick up fallen leaves, sticks, and other debris. This helps keep your water cleaner for a longer period of time while also removing items that can provide shelter or draw bugs, a frog’s favorite food.
• Limit Lights – Lights may help you keep the fun going when the sun goes down, but they also attract bugs. Limiting light use after dark when the pool isn’t in use can make it less attractive to insects, sending the frogs’ food sources elsewhere.
• Use Citric Acid or Vinegar to Set A Perimeter – A frog’s amphibian skin is sensitive, requiring a careful balance of factors to keep it moist, supple, and protected. Acidic substances, like vinegar and citric acid solutions, serve as a deterrent when used to treat the ground around a pool, discouraging frogs from crossing this chemical perimeter while also being gentle enough to preserve the health of the soil while keeping pets and children safe.
• Minimize Current Dead Zones – Still water is a far more attractive place for bugs to gather, making it not only a prime hunting area for frogs but also creating a more hospitable environment to lay their eggs. Adjusting the flow of circulation for your pool’s water to eliminate dead zones and still areas will help keep it from becoming too inviting.
• Add Lifesaving Rescue Rafts – If your pool isn’t securely covered, then part of how to get rid of frogs from the pool along with other critters is creating an easy way for them to leave the swimming pool. Rafts and ramps that float on the surface of the water give these small creatures an easy way to get out of the water and float when they need a break or even leave the pool entirely. 
• Add A Safer Alternative -One way to keep frogs out of your pool is to give them a better place to hunt, shelter, and mate. Many pool owners offer a separate pond as a way to attract frogs to control the bug population while still keeping them out of the swimming pool.
• Install Pool Safety Barriers – Pool safety barriers are designed to secure your swimming pool area, preventing unsupervised access for prevention of accidental drownings, which take thousands of lives every year. They can also play a part in keeping frogs from your pool. Professionally installed removable mesh pool fencing creates a more secure perimeter around the pool area with minimal gaps. Swimming pool safety covers, meanwhile, are secured around the perimeter of the pool by either rails or steel clips attached to anchors. These covers limit access to the pool’s water with a rip-resistant mesh that resists the elements, custom-fit to your swimming pool by an independent safety pro in your local community.

Making Your Pool Safer for Frogs (and Pets and Kids, Too)

Your local All-Safe Pool pro is your first step toward protecting your swimming pool area. They have the tools and experience to tailor a safety plan to your pool’s unique needs and install it properly to maximize protection. They’ll schedule a visit to take measurements and talk to you about your needs as a pool owner, then they’ll create a custom quote that lays out your options. Creating a safer pool starts without cost or obligation. Request your free quote from your local All-Safe Pool installer today.