Does anyone have a good website for species identification ???

F

frantic

Guest
My kids have adopted a couple of newt/salamander type creature.... and I am having trouble finding a good website to help identify which variety they are... And could some one please explain the difference between newt/salamander/axolotls/waterdogs...
Thanks for any assistance...
 
Frantic, what state/country do you live in? Where they found in water or on land? How large are they? Do they have gills?

In most cases salamanders live on land, newts (often) live in water (but use lungs, not gills), and waterdogs/mudpuppies/axolotls have obvious external gills and live entirely in water.
 
do u have a pic of it? if u could put one on here that would be a lot of help to identify what it is.
 
do u have a pic of it? if u could put one on here that would be a lot of help to identify what it is.
 
We bought them at a Arizona bait shop. The first (about 5") lost it's gills, and has not been observed eating yet, it has not crawled on top of the rocks in the aquarium but usually sits with it's nose out of water... the other one...(3.5") has frilly gills and eats voraciously, I put 24 tuffies in the tank and 'she' ate them in two days. I have not been able to get a decent picture yet... Thanks for all assist
 
They are tiger salamanders (A. mavortium), without question. The only question is which subspecies. It's going to take a few months for their adult patterns to form well enough to identify them to subspecies.
 
Thanks... now all I have to do is figure out how long the morphing one can stay in the water... before I need to create a land terarium for 'him'.
And, does 'he' need a fully land tank... or do I need to partion it off and give him half water, half land???
Thanks again for any help
 
I heard that if you have an axy morphing you shoul make half of your tank land (using oil rocks gravel etc.) and half of your tank full of water and when it moves on to land you get rid of the water, make the whole tank land with a dish or a bit of water just in case it still wants to go into the water
 
The morphed one will need an all-land terrarium. Once it starts to crawl out of the water and has no more gills, it's OK to move it to a terrarium with water dish. Once it has a place to dig/hide, it will probably prefer land to water. Setting up a good half/half tank requires a large tank. It might be cheaper and easier to keep two tanks - the morphed on in it's own 10-gallon terrarium (or plastic box), and the gilled one in a fully-water tank. When the other one morphs, they can live together again. Read this, if you haven't already:
http://www.caudata.org/caudatecentral/caresheets/Ambystoma_tigrinum.html
 
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