Your newt sounds like he was shedding normally. Sometimes my newts will crowd on one another, and it almost appears that it helps with the friction to give the skin another surface to rub the skin off onto. Your newt was biting at it because what they do in a shed is this normally:
The newt starts the shed by opening and closing the mouth to stretch the skin and make it come loose around the nose and mouth area first. (Maybe it feels tight or itches?) They look like they are gasping for air at first. It quickly slides off and down to the "neck" area. You can tell because the newly shedded area is wetter and shinier and they look like they have a dark skin collar on. Next, they rub on a surface or another newt to take it down over their front "arms" keeping them close to their sides. They have to pull each "hand" out individually to get out the "fingers". Then the use more friction on the surfaces they are around to work this band of skin which is usually black, dark grey, or greenish down around their torso to in front of their hind legs and do the same thing again. By the time they get to the tail, they take the skin on their tail in their mouth and take it down the tail and off the end and eat it. Sometimes, they will have residual skin sticking "fingers" or "toes" together, so it is best to wet them and use a toothpick to gently pull them off.
Usually if the skin is discarded somewhere, they will not go back and eat it, but I did witness a smaller FBN go and eat a discarded skin that a bigger one left, so don't remove it right away. It is a source of nutrients for them including protein. If it's been a while, go ahead and remove it so it doesn't dirty the water.
As far as them not really getting in the water much, if you have juveniles, they will tend to be mostly land-dwellers for maybe a year or two, then they will appreciate the water more and you will find that they will hardly want the land. I had a tank that was 3/4 water to 1/4 land and they all crowded on the land part. I converted it to mostly land and have two lidless containers of water with dechlorinated water in them and some river rocks. I change the water in one every day. The other is deeper and has some egg-laying strips in it and I have not changed it yet. They have river rocks on the bottom of the tank that water collects in between that they like to hide in, and there is a hiding cave/tree thing, and a fake plant. I feed the crickets on a small dish. The newts love going between the land and the shallow container of water which is probably only about 2 inches or so deep with some rocks in it. Sometimes they are totally submerged, and other times, they are sticking out part way. They other container would allow total submersion and swimming, though they really don't seem to pick that one.
Hope this helps! Good luck. Keep us informed.:happy:
Just make sure that if you do this set up like I have that you use cotton or something to plug up the space between the container and the wall (really well), or you could have stuck crickets, or worse yet...stuck FBNs! You would be surprised how small a space either will fit into!
If they can fit, out of curiosity, they will probably try it. Please keep that in mind and check in on them.
