CB in large scale?

[jesper]

During the last year or so I've heard, from several local petshops, that a company in Chechia has started breeding pleurodeles waltl and cynops orientalis in what they call large scale to offer to pet shops around europe. Anyone else heard about this?

 

[jennifer]

No, but it would be great if it were true! Pleurodeles would certainly be good candidates for mass production.

 

[jesper]

Yeah well, I've heard it from several independent petshop owners and have seen the animals coming in. These animals are somewhat more expensive than previous WC animals. Might just be fraud to raise the prices, it is kind of difficult to say. I'll try to get their name and more info.

 

[erik]

Based on what I've seem and heard I think it's true for P.waltl at least. There are hundreds of waltl coming in to the US importers every year and I'm assuming they are not being collected in Spain, Portugal or N.Africa. They are calling them names like "godzilla" newt. They seem to arrive along with (Ukraine?) shipments of Salamandra.

C.orientalis? I can't imagine that breeding orientalis is economically feasible. I mean wc orientalis in China wholesale for 25-30 cents USD,Unless wc orientalis are seasonal?

 

[jesper]

Ah, but they sell these cb orientalis for about 10 dollars per newt here.
Orientalis cost as much as pleurodeles here.

 

[benjamin]

In england C. orientalis is about 4£ a piece. I think they'ld lend them selves quite well to captive breeding. I managed to breed mine just two years after I got them with no prior experience.

 

[jennifer]

Erik, I have assumed that those "godzilla" newts were WC. Could they be collected illegally, then marketed through the Ukraine (a sort of "newt laundering"), or am I being too cynical? Some of them seem too large to be likely CB.

Ben, how far along are your CB orientalis? While it's not too hard to get eggs, it takes a long time to get the offspring to a "marketable" size. Also, unlike Pleurodeles, egg laying happens for only a few months per year. This is what makes them unlikely candidates for mass production.

 

[benjamin]

I hate to say it but two years ago when I bred them I was stupid, I was only thirteen so don't get too mad at me , I'm pretty mad at my self though, god I feel so guilty. I clipped the leaves containing the eggs of the plants, as the leaves rotted the the eggs died. After realizing what I had done was wrong I did not remove the remaining eggs from the aquarium with the adults because my female had expensive egg laying preferences. By the end of the summer there was not a single egg or larvae (I don't think there ever were larvae because the eggs got eaten too fast). To make matters even worse my female and three of my males died of either blanket weed entanglement or temperature shock over the winter and their bodies were swiftly consumed by a giant pond snail before I got the chance to find them. What ever killed them it frightened the heck out of my remaining male, he used to be highly aquatic but now he only enters the water once a week to feed, I think he's very lonely and sad. If only I could get some adults now, I know I'ld be able to breed them and raise the eggs with in the next year, it just doesn't look like it's going to happen, I'm just mad I blew it when I had the chance.

Would anybody here be able to tell me where a store that sells them in england is, I would like to get some this upcoming weekend? This time I'll get it right, I promise!!

 

[jesper]

The new orientalis that came in the other day were really small though, never seen so small orientalis before. They must have gone through metamorphosis recently. Why shouldn't small metmorphs be marketable Jen? These ones were sold pretty fast even though they were expensive.

 

[ralf]

It seems that the imported C.o. become smaller and smaller, which could be a sign of severe overharvesting.
C.o. are tiny at metamorphosis compared to e.g. C.e. and it takes an experienced keeper and a lot of effort to further raise them from this stage. Cannot imagine anybody doing this large scale and still earning money with it.

 

[nate]

I continue to see the same variety of sizes in orientalis at my local stores as I have for the past 4 or 5 years...tiny to moderately large.

I agree, I cannot see orientalis being a profitable species to raise when they can be harvested from the wild so cheaply.

 

[jesper]

So c.o. are that difficult to raise eh? You guys are probably right then. It'll be easy to check when I get their name, I suppose. The petshop owner was sure they were cb, not that I really trusted him but when he mentioned that they came from a company in Chechia that also provides cb waltls, I though well maybe then. That's why I checked with you guys.

 

[yago]

Well, you will be surprise about what I will say now.
In southern Spain, pleurodeles is not purposely breed in fish factories 'piscifactorias'. As they eat the same food as fishes they breed in the same swimming pools and every year when they clean up the swimming pools they remove all the pleurodeles. Literally tons of pleurodeles are being capture. As they are a plague and they cannot get any profit of them since they are protected in Spain what they do is to burn them all year after year. Of course, this is not supposed to be known by the authorities either. All the tragedy was recorded in a non Spanish TV documentary…
So, this is another sad example of ‘protection’ which ends up with worse consequences for the specie.

 

[joseph]

Yago: Thats very sad to hear.

Hmmm...so C. o morphs are hard to raise? What do you mean by that(observes his growing C. o larvae)?

 

[ralf]

Joseph, don't worry. They are not particularly hard to raise compared to other newts. You just have to observe and put some effort into raising them. Two things that dealers usually don't do.
First you'll have to decide on the setup for the metamorphs. I raise mine terrestrially but others on this forum have succeeded in adapting them to the water again after metamorphosis (Paris, I think). Mine like it dry sometimes and wander between different zones of humidity in their setups. You should alter the setup, whenever you think the animals feel "uncomfortable".
I've had good success raising them in small groups (10-15) on layers of cork bark topped with moss. However, there are lots of different ways to do it. There are excellent articles on C.o. and the raising of young newts on Caudate Central.
Provide food organisms that are small enough to be devoured by the metamorphs (e.g. springtails, black- or whiteworms, small earthworms, drosophila etc. etc.). You might even consider to breed some of these food organisms since it might save you some money. Using fresh moss from the woods will already contain some small organisms. Just make sure there aren't any large predatory beetles in it (esp. during fall and winter).

 

[alan]

In the last week, my CB04 orientalis (currently ~35mm TL) have gone from 100% terrestrial (corkbark island, 24C) to 90% aquatic (corkbark island, 17C). This has got to be due to the drop in temperature after a move. Hopefully, they'll grow quicker now.

On profitability, it constantly boggles me that it is economic to breed ornamental fish such as a livebearers and tetras in the Far East, ship them round the world to the UK where they retail for less than one pound. Net cost after stripping out the profits down the supply chain can only be pennies per animal. The difference? These fish are of marketable size after 2-3 months. I don't know what the minimum marketable size for an orientalis is, but most of the ones I see offered in the UK are effectively adults, probably mostly WC.

 

[edward]

When I worked in the pet trade for the first time in the mid-1980s, the store was paying something like 9 cents US each for most sword tails and $75 frieght for the box. They would buy about 600-800 swords at a time and the end result was that the swords cost between 13 and 10 cents apiece.
The labor costs of raising the fish has raised the cost from the US farms high enough that is is often cheaper to buy the fish direct from Singapore (even after you include the increased shipping) or have it transhipped in from there, or even buy it from a wholesaler who has brought it in from Asia. The question is the volume that can be purchased to bring the price down sufficiently to offset the frieght charges.

Ed

 

[alan]

C.orientalis retail in the UK for around 3-4 pounds. Clearly, not as many are sold as tropical fish, but at that markup, it must be close to being able to cover shipping costs and be profitable. I guess it's just too small a market c/w fish to attract any interest.