Baby Fire Belly Newts

[sammymanta]

Hi everyone. I am new to this page and have a question. I have had fire belly newts for years and to my amazement, they have laid eggs. I have read some stuff online but still looking for exact direction. I have removed the eggs from the adult tank. I know that they will form into larvae...then what? I have set up a new tank for them with some water and some land. They are still covered in the gel stuff and some haven't turned into larvae yet. What do I do? Do I put the eggs in the water part of the new tank or land part? When will I know to start feeding them? Can someone guide me thru this stage? I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks

 

[Jennewt]

For the moment, they need to be in water. They will not need ANY land for the next several months. Here's a rough sequence of events:
eggs is laid
~3 weeks later it hatches into gilled larva ("tadpole")
~3 months later it goes through metamorphosis into a miniature newt

During the egg and larva stage, they need only water. During metamorphosis, they need land on which to climb out. After metamorphosis, they need to be kept either fully terrestrial (think terrarium, not aquarium) ~or~ in a very shallow semi-aquatic setup.

See:
http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/raising.shtml

 

[achiinto]

1) the eggs should be placed in a fully aquatic environment.
2) raise some brineshrimp to feed the larvae after they hatched. You willl need a brineshrimp breeding chamber, a small air pump tube to change water, a syringe will help you start off the tube for water change. Syringe with a tube connected can be used to remove brineshrimp from the chamber. Then you will need a very fine fish net to filter the salt water and the shrimp, before feeding the larvae with the shrimp.
3) You will see the larvae get bigger, as they grew large enough, you may start feeding them with bloodworm (forzen bloodworm need to be fed with tweezer.) You may consider feeding other type of live small aquatic invertebrate.
4) When their gills started to disappear, you should take out the newts with the least gill and place it in a tank with very little water and a central land area, possible with some java moss all over the water area for them to rest on. Now they will try to go on land. (their might be ways to keep the entire lifecycle of CO aquatic. http://www.caudata.org/people/JM/Cp_juv.html)
5) If you are keeping the metamorph on land. you will have to wait for a few weeks, which they will reject food. By this time, you should start preparing a terrestrial food for them. For example, buy a culture of Springtails. BUy some flightless fruitflies. If you are to feed flightless fruitflies, you will have to put a net on top of your land based enclosure to keep the flies from escaping.
6) as the metamorph get bigger, you can try to feed them frozen bloodworm as a small ball on a toothpick. This handfeeding process is time consuming, but make sure the newts are healthy. I used to feed my newts this way 2 hours per day, to raise my 70 CO metamorph.
7) soon, when you see fit, you can reintroduce them to water. I let them stayed on land for a year, before the reintroduction.

* - I used to chnage water 50% daily when they were still eggs or larvae.
** - I used a bog setting as the terrestrial setting as they metamorphs. (bog setting detail: http://livingunderworld.org/amphibianArticles/article0020.shtml)

In summary, it is not easy to raise a newt from egg to adult, but well worth it. I started appreciating life a lot more, after knowing how difficult it is to raise a newt from egg.