Cynops Cyanurus rearing journal

Hey all. Been awhile since I've posted. Glad to be back in the hobby thanks to Dannie88. Thought I would keep a journal of my experience raising some Cynops Cyanurus eggs to adulthood partly so I have a record of what I did and also maybe to get some needed advice where necessary. I hope it ends up being of value to others.

I purchased 20 Cynops Cyanurus eggs through Dannie88 and received them 4/21. 29 eggs arrived(way too generous) and it appears 26 are viable. I split the eggs evenly between two 1 gallon rubbermaid containers that range from 66-68 degrees depending on the time of the day. Hopefully I'll end up with enough viable young to get around 10 or so adults and able to find homes for the rest.

The first egg hatched 4/25 and two more hatched tonight 4/27. I may follow up to find out roughly when the eggs were laid to get a rough idea of incubation time.

I have cultures of walter worms, grindal worms, daphnia, cyclops/seed shrimp, scuds, springtails and I'm trying to get a tubifex culture going.

A little experiment I'm thinking of trying is to see if tomato and pepper(not hot, but not sure if newts react to capsaicin either) based carotenoids have any sort of effect on belly pigmentation in newts. I have some walter worm cultures that are thriving on a mixture of rehydrated tomatoes and peppers along with rice and yeast. The worms are definitely taking on a red/orange hue but I'm not sure if that's coloration in their gut or surface film.

It may all be a wash anyway as I have some astaxanthin I'll be using to supplement in the various cultures and I'm not willing to short change the diet of some by excluding food sources.

Attached are pictures of the two rearing enclosures. Once they outgrow these tubs I'll plan on moving them to some 10 gallon aquariums or I may just upgrade to bigger tubs. We'll see.

Let me know if there's anything I'm missing or could be doing better. Hope to have some more updates soon.

Three more hatched overnight when I checked on the tubs before work for a total of three per tub. I dropped some walter worms in the tub with the oldest larvae(hatch 4/25) just in case it exhausted its yolk sac. I seeded the tubs with some copepods too for supplemental feeding. Looking forward to seeing if any more made their way out when I get home.

I'll be very interested in following this thread as I now have a trio of cyanurus and hope they breed next year.

Also, when they are of the right age, I would love to see belly pictures of your guys to see how their diet has colored them!

Looking forward to updates,

HJ

Yes, me too. I've experimented with dusting food for my juvenile C. pyrrhogaster with crushed Cichlid pellets in this thread.

http://www.caudata.org/forum/f1173-...0-new-blood-my-cynops-pyrrhogaster-group.html

I've also been experimenting with adding paprika to my 2015 juvies diet, but the adults are getting better and better at egg finding and eating, so I don't have that many Guinea pigs to work with this time.

By the way, I'm very jealous of you both with your swanky, posh C. cyanurus. I've been trying to track some down for ages, but they are very thin on the ground here in the UK.

Chinadog said:

I've experimented with dusting food for my juvenile C. pyrrhogaster with crushed Cichlid pellets in this thread.

http://www.caudata.org/forum/f1173-...0-new-blood-my-cynops-pyrrhogaster-group.html

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LOL Chinadog! That's very thread that prompted me to buy the Ciclid pellets a few months ago! I have only been supplementing a few of my adults, though, and think it will take more than just a month to notice a difference. But if I do, I will have you to thank for it

HJ

Thanks for your interest everyone. I will definitely keep the progress updates coming.

Got home and it looks like at least two more have hatched. Probably not much more to report until they start eating food. In the meantime though here's a gratuitous larvae shot as well as pictures of the copepod culture and walter worm culture based on pepper/tomato.

I count myself lucky to have these eggs. Wouldn't you know it, it was a dream that got me thinking about getting back into the caudate hobby. Luckily the timing of my muse was right considering the ban as it is. Petco having a dollar per gallon sale on their aquariums doesn't hurt either.

Not much to report other than most of the eggs have hatched. Some of them have actually hatched prematurely. Is this a normal thing? At first I thought they may be stillborn but I see them continuing to develop(gills where there weren't gills before) so I'm guessing they may end up ok?

Haven't observed any eating yet but there's plenty of copepods floating around in the water so I'm not too concerned at the moment of missing someone who's hungry.

Hope everyone's weekend was a good one.

I've had a few C. pyrrhogaster eggs hatch early after a trip through the post. I think the jelly may have been damaged or started to dry out. I don't think any survived, but maybe it depends how close to hatching naturally they are?

Not too sure. In this case they "hatched" about a week after they arrived. I checked on them again after work and I can't locate them anymore so they're probably hiding out in the java moss like the rest. I think they'll make it.

I have had some hatch early. They made it at least to get big enough to mix in with the rest. I think they made it. I had 2 hatch early whan trying to remove frome java fern. They where bent for a day or two and smaller. But they grow and i couldn't see any bad defects.

Canecorsonewt said:

I have had some hatch early. They made it at least to get big enough to mix in with the rest. I think they made it. I had 2 hatch early whan trying to remove frome java fern. They where bent for a day or two and smaller. But they grow and i couldn't see any bad defects.

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Yeah I think these will end up the same although the larvae spend so much time in the java moss I can't tell what's going on. I do have a photo of one of the further along ones though. Starting to darken up some. How's things going on your end?

Included in this update are some non-newt pictures of some new arrivals today. The shot with the potted plants is currently housing some Heterandria Formosa(30), the world's smallest livebearer if I've read right and the other shot of the single fish is 1 of 16 juvenile Elassoma Okeefenokee, a pygmy sunfish native to Florida. The males display some striking black and blue coloration while breeding so I'm looking forward to that.

They'll be spending time in separate 10 gallon tanks until I have their 40 gallon breeder all set up and cycled. Hope to have something more interesting to update with soon but I should be happy to have all viable eggs hatched, good water parameters and seemingly good health.

Sorry for all of the poor quality pictures, I need to get a proper camera. Anywho, til next time.

So today I decided to spread out the java moss some more so I can monitor the larvae a bit better. They were spending all of their time in there and I could hardly see any of them.

I was concerned that they were not eating but if any did starve it was their own fault as the tubs are seeded with copepods and I've been dropping walter worms in about once a day to every other day. There are now daphnia moina swimming around in there(they arrived on Friday).

Spreading out the java moss gave me an opportunity to get a real good look at current development and they must be eating(haven't really seen any feeding yet) as the ones who are furthest along are growing their front legs(best seen in the first pic).

I'm pretty happy with the water parameters too. Haven't had to do a water change yet but the bioload is pretty low too I suppose. And a nice surprise from the last update is I now have an in tub culture of bloodworms. I identified what the egg sacs look like so I harvested some from my other tanks and tossed them in the tub that doesn't have any. Any reason why I shouldn't leave them in with my larvae?

Bloodworms as I know them are red mosquito larvae, is that what you mean or something else? It makes me wonder because you say culture, obviously you can only culture mosquito larvae with mosquitoes!

Chinadog said:

Bloodworms as I know them are red mosquito larvae, is that what you mean or something else? It makes me wonder because you say culture, obviously you can only culture mosquito larvae with mosquitoes!

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Yep. They look just like this http://www.albertastillwaters.com/overlookingmidgelarva.htm. By culture I mean I just leave them be and let the eggs hatch when I see them. I figure it beats buying frozen ones and the tanks are in the basement so the adults are not too much of a bother.

Well I lost 3 from the same tub today. Not sure what happened but I did an emergency water of about 60% on both tubs. The rest appear to be fine and I lost none in the second tub.

Any ideas to the spontaneous death? What's worse is that some of them I lost were the furthest along so I don't think it was starvation. The ammonia when I checked it was 0-0.25. I want to say it was at 0 but the color might have been borderline. Nitrites and Nitrates are at 0. No outward sign of disease. Just real strange and a little unsettling.

Were there any Cyclops in their water? Cyclops can apparently cause mortality in very small larvae.

There most likely are in both tubs if they haven't been gobbled up yet. The ones that were lost were about .5 to .75 inch.

No more are belly up today so hopefully it was just a freak die off or perhaps that ammonia was more on the .25 side. Will keep a closer eye on water quality from here on in case it ends up being the issue.

Been awhile since I updated. Since the last time I updated I ended up losing more larvae until I only had 11 left. Figured out that it was borderline levels of ammonia that caused the first round of deaths and this round of deaths. Luckily I've stabilized by moving the remainder to a 10 gallon filled to about 6 gallons with a corner bubble filter. I would have done this earlier but I didn't have a spare primed filter and thought I had more time in the tubs.

In their new home their growth has exploded on daphnia and bloodworms and we're looking at 3 weeks since the last crisis. I think it should be smooth sailing from here on out until metamorphosis. I've set up a floating foam island with java moss on top that will hopefully have some more time to grow out. How long might I have before I can expect them to haul themselves out of water? First eggs hatched 4/25.

Included are pictures of some self-cloning crayfish that I'm raising to use their young for feeders. Mostly for a Leopard Ctenopoma I have but if the newts like them then I'm sure there will be plenty to go around. The baby crayfish are about 5 mm when newly born.

What kind of crayfish are they? I'd like to give them a try for my newts.

Chinadog said:

What kind of crayfish are they? I'd like to give them a try for my newts.

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They don't have a scientific name yet but they're commonly known as Marmorkrebs.