Does my red backed salamander look healthy?

[Corvidophile]

Hi, I used to catch Cuban, Carolina, and knight anoles constantly as a kid in Florida and have a good eye for their body condition, but I'm entirely new to amphibians! I've tried looking up body condition charts on salamanders but haven't found much. What SHOULD my red backed salamander look like, proportion wise? What muscle and bone structures should be visible, what should be hidden, and is there a general rule of thumb for comparing the size of the head, body, and tail?

I've had this guy for a month now and he's been eating wild worms and slugs. Well, they're disappearing anyway- never been able to see him eat. I think it's a male because of the throat structure, but I'm not positive. I found him laying in a driveway an hour from my home in late November, it had been in the 50's for a week and then suddenly snapped down to the 30's, which I figure probably left him stranded out in the open. I didn't know about how low a temperature they live in at that point, so I treated him like a lizard and put him up my sleeve to warm up and went home. He got VERY active after about five minutes and it was all I could do to juggle him between hands before I could put him in a cup!

I had an empty 20 gallon long tank, so I tried to make as wild an environment I could because I wasn't sure about keeping or releasing. It's all local plants, dirt, rocks, sticks, and bugs. The water I use to fill the dish and sprinkle over the dirt is collected rainwater, supplemented by bottled spring water if it's been too dry to collect. Every week or so I turn over rocks in the yard and catch more worms and add them in. I have sizes ranging from longer than the salamander to little babies as long as the salamander's arm living in the tank, and I've got two slugs crawling around as cleanup crew, eating rotting leaves and roots. I had one fuzzy white mold growth early on when the soil was too wet, but removed it and let the soil dry out more, and the slugs help too, they eat decaying matter before it molds. The plants are a dandelion of some sort, ribwort plantain, unidentified moss, unidentified garlic, and sweet violet.

Anyway, I'm STILL undecided on keeping him or not, when I picked him up I thought I was rescuing him because I didn't know how cold they liked it! I'm not sure I'm doing him any favors keeping him captive, which is why I came here: please take a look at him after a month captive and tell me if he's better, worse, or the same. The cup photos are the day I found him.

http://www.caudata.org/forum/members/corvidophile-albums-red-backed-salamander.html

Forgot to mention, the tank is next to a west-facing window directly above the side yard where all the dirt and plants came from.

 

[sde]

I think you've done a good job with him for sure!
He seems about the same weight as when you found him and looks great to me. As for visible bones and such...ideally no bones should be sticking out anywhere, the way he is now is ideal.

I can't offer much help other than that as i am not too familiar with this species, but whether you decide to keep him or not, i'd say you certainly saved him from death, so well done.

 

[Corvidophile]

Thanks for the encouragement! I'm surprised I found him first instead of a bird or cat. If I decide to release him, how far from where I picked him up is acceptable? I took him from a literal driveway so can't place him back there, and I can only imagine the questions of the homeowners if they caught me digging a hole in their mulch. "Oh don't mind me, I'm just re-installing this salamander I took from your driveway earlier!"

I'm not comfortable releasing him in my own backyard because I garden a lot and haven't encountered ANY caudata before, no frogs, and only toads in one big explosion every summer (they're like perennials, they bury themselves and pop up again after winter) so I figure there's something stopping them from living here... I'm only a ten minute walk from the Delaware River, so the area should be salamander territory.

 

[sde]

Any place with trees/forest would be good...or if you could try to figure out where he came from you could put him back there. He must have come from some place nearby, perhaps a grove of trees or a greenbelt or something? I'm not sure how urban your area is so its hard to say, but either way a forested area would be ideal i'd say.