Eurycea bislineata tank

[Otterwoman]

Word on the street must be that I take in unwanted E. bis. I started out with one, and acquired two more unwanted ones. I decided to try to make a naturalistic setting for them. Since they are brook salamanders, I tried to create a bit of a current with an old filter.
I used many ideas that I got from reading this forum. For example, in the upper right corner (pic 1) is a springtail culture that I'm growing right in the tank. I can always find one of the sals in there. There are also a few small worms in there too. The tan bowl to the right of it is for blackworms, but I just emptied and cleaned it. The clay bowl is just to give them a choice if they want some dirt/leaf substrate to hang out in. So far, they are never in that. They like to hang out in the water, in the rock crevices. So their food is: springtails, blackworms, earthworms, and fruit flies.
The second pic has a brick with a rock on top. Because of the printing on the brick, it forms a space of about 1/3 inch and they love to be under that.
The culture and worm bowl is held up on a tile supported by clay pots (see pics three and four), with an opening broken out in each (openings not visible in the pic). Gives them more area to explore, and to hunt blackworms that escape from their bowl. It is a 15 gallon tank, recently recycled (after being thoroughly washed) from my pair of geckos, which have received a 40 gallon breeder to stretch out in.
I hope they like it!

I have a question: I'm trying to sex them and looking for their naso-labial grooves. Are they visible always, or only in breeding season?

Finally, you can see one of them in between the worm bowl and the clay bowl, in picture 2.

Any advice or comments, appreciated!

 

[Slimy2]

hi

I think that is a nice setup. I had the southern species. My old E. serratus males only have their grooves during mating season and my females eggs never turn out to be fertile. I've never found them easy to breed. They loved to hide underneath the filter where the water is rushing and that was where they would shed there skin and eat it. I'm not sure why they chose that spot though?


Here is a page from my site that shows the grooves.
http://www.freewebs.com/slimysalamanders/southerntwolineds.htm


cameron

 

[Otterwoman]

Hey Cameron,
Long time no hear! I was thinking just tonight of pm-ing you and asking you about this. I already had your site bookmarked and referred to it when checking for those grooves because your picture of them is so good!
When I look at them from underneath (when I transferred them to their new tank and had them in a glass jar), I saw a lot of that light yellow color in their bellies, but I don't think it's their mating season yet (I did this two weeks before I posted it). But I'm hoping with this more naturalistic setup, maybe ... I read that they were easy to breed. But if they're all females, no matter how great my setup is, I suppose it will be unlikely.

 

[Slimy2]

hi

Well it is the northern species and who knows, it could be real easy to breed. Good luck though.

P.S. I haven't been on the forum because I moved to Arkansas and didn't have computer. But I'm not leaving this site. I've also done a little more on my site in case you haven't seen me and Ryan's (used some of his pics and info)caterpiller pages and other stuff.

 

[geganewt]

i think it should be more territorial, because the tank i have is a half-land/half-water and have never found them in the water, they're always under the Mounded Velvet Moss (so-call "frog-moss") and i would advise getting it for them, they love it

 

[Slimy2]

frog moss

I used it for mine to and they loved it.

 

[Jennewt]

That's a very nice tank for them. It has lots of complexity for them to explore. You could also throw in a few houseplant cuttings, like pothos or spiderwort, they'll grow in/out of the water nicely in this kind of setup.

The sals probably don't mind the Stonehenge motif, but don't you worry about them suffering serious psychological damage from living in the shadow of the Geico Gecko?? It probably looks to them like King Kong looks to us:rofl:

 

[geganewt]

again nice tank, here's mine (i hope this don't seem rude)

 

[Otterwoman]

I'm glad you added your pics!
Wow, you used your filter just the same way! I got my idea from the pet store where I shop, and I told him he was a genius and I would be using that idea. Great minds must think alike!

I don't think my tank gets enough light though to keep a plant alive.

The gecko puts the fear of god in them. Maybe I'll tell them it's a fertility god and they'd better appease it.