Baby newts are dying

[kurt]

Some of my newts are starting to die. I change 50% of the water daily. I am feeding daily, daphnia and brine shrimp. I don't believe that I am over feeding. Any ideas or suggestions!

 

[jennifer]

I assume you are talking about larvae? Are the daphnia and brine shrimp live or frozen? Can you see food in their bellies? In addition to the water change, you may need to wipe clean the inside of the container every couple of days (i.e., transfer them to a clean container).

 

[peter]

Like Jen said, you have to be careful with feeding brine shrimp, I've lost many animals to these before I got the hang of it. =( Temperature or cannibalism could be a problem too; do you notice any wounds on the dead animals?

What species are they?

 

[kurt]

They appear to be Spanish Newts, (larvae), I haven't been cleaning the container but have been removing the old food and gunk from the bottom. I will start. Haven't noticed any sores on the heads. The Daphnia is frozen and the brine shrimp are live. why do I need to be careful with brine shrimp?

 

[shaun]

Brine shrimp egg casings can cause intestinal impaction. Just be very careful not to scoop up any of the <font color="ff0000">&#149;</font><font color="ff0000">&#149;</font><font color="ff0000">&#149;</font><font color="ff0000">&#149;</font> floating around with the baby brine shrimp.

 

[jennifer]

Regarding the brine shrimp, Shaun is right. If there are unhatched bs eggs, or empty casings in with the newts, some larvae will eat them and die.

Another possibility is overcrowding. What kind of containers are you using, and how many larvae are in each? I generally recommend that anyone who is not experienced in raising larvae should not try to raise more than 10-20 larvae. (Just my opinion, lots of people disagree with this on philosophical grounds.)

I sort of disagree with Mike (sorry, Mike). There are 2 possible "housing" options that seem to work for me with larvae. (1) A cycled (established) tank, maintained the way Mike says, i.e., spot cleaning and small (up to 25%) water changes. (2) Clean containers with 100% water changes and abrupt transfer of the larvae to a clean container every two days or so. Although the second method sounds brutal, all I can say is that it WORKS. What does NOT work for me is trying to steer an intermediate course, i.e., a new (non-cycled) tank or container and using gentle cleaning and water changes.

When I do 100% water changes on larvae, I literally just "pour" the larvae from one container to another. Or I pour them into a net and then dump the net in clean water. If the water is 100% changed every couple of days, it does not have the chance to change in chemistry (as it does in an long-term tank), so the fresh water is basically the same in composition (minus the waste) as the water they are in. I hope this makes sense.

For Kurt, if you have a large number of larvae, it may help to try several different regimens for kinds of containers, water changes, number of animals together, etc. and see what works for you.

 

[kurt]

I was able to use a magnifying glass and I can see egg casings in their bellies. That's what is killing them. I guess frozen daphnia is about the safest thing. Any other suggestion for food. I will stop with the brine shrimp as I see no way to be sure that there are no egg casings.

 

[jennifer]

Kurt, I still think that live bbs are better than dead daphnia. You may need to get better bs eggs, so that most of them hatch. Some of the eggs from pet stores have such a low hatch rate, that separating hatched from unhatched is difficult. Also, use a bright light to attract the hatched ones to one spot, then pull them out with a pipette or turkey baster.

 

[joeri]

Spanish newts, grow very quickly if you can feed them live daphnia for one week, and than you can allready use live artemia and in no time frozen bloodworms. I had a big loss of these past summer myself, but I blame the heatwave that lasted 2 weeks when they were hatching (and I didn't have the time back than to cool them enough).

I placed some of my smaller larves in a tank stuffed with live daphnia, and they grew to become giants within days.

 

[kurt]

How do I go about getting live daphnia. Can't seem to find it anywhere.

 

[anthony]

try a shop that sells tropical fish they should know how to get hold of it for you.

 

[jennifer]

www.dallasdiscus.com has the best price anywhere. But if you want a large or sustained supply, you will have to keep them going as a culture.

 

[kurt]

I check this site out. What is the difference between daphnia magna and daphnia pulex?

 

[jennifer]

small = Moina
medium = Daphnia pulex
large = Daphnia magna

All three will produce tiny offspring, so any of them would be suitable.

While you are at it, Kurt, I highly recommend that you find a source of live blackworms, if you haven't already.

 

[kurt]

Are these blackworms easy to find?

 

[jennifer]

It depends on where you live, Kurt. If you live in Denver, I can guarantee that some pet shop has them. If you live in Middle-of-nowhere, it's hit or miss. Get out your local Yellow Pages. Call all the pet shops within driving distance and ask if they have either "live blackworms" or "live bloodworms" (they are normally sold as food for fish). If you live in Colo Springs, ask Paris where to get them.

If they are unobtainable locally, you can mail order them, but the minimum order costs $20. I do this, but it doesn't make sense unless you are feeding a ton of animals, or are desperate.

I would say that live blackworms are truly a "secret of success" for raising newt larvae. Chopped, they can be fed to even very small larvae. Blackworms will virtually guarantee rapid growth of larger larvae.

 

[kurt]

I do live in Colorado Springs, how would I get in contact with Paris?

I did find a place to order them on the Internet and I do seem to have a lot of animals. Goldfish, koi, guppies, frogs, and now about 200 baby newt larvae. I know thats a lot but I don't have the heart to decide who lives and who dies. So I will leave that up to them. Even the ones that were full of shrimp eggs and floating on top of the water, on their backs seem to be doing fine now. I am still feeding the newts brine shrimp but am trying to develop a technique not to feed then the eggs.I would definitely be interested in the live black worms.

 

[joseph]

http://aquaticfoods.com/freesamples.html
If not, your petstore could try this and see. This farm is very close to me, so my LFS guy prolly just drives and picks them up.

 

[kurt]

That's one of the places I found on the Internet. I was hoping to find a place locally first, then ordering them if I have to.

 

[joseph]

Kurt: You could simply request your LFS to order for you...that would give them there first sample and if it sold well then they would probably carry it regularly.

The only bad thing about blackworms is that they don't have too long of a shelf life...inspect them before you buy!