Well firstly he is certainly a Chinese firebelly. Japanese firebellies are much more expensive to for the importers to acquire, so they almost never show up in the pet trade. I'm not trying to make you feel bad, but I would urge you to reconsider before buying more from the pet store. All asian newts that are sold in petstores are wild caught and shipped all over the world in awful conditions. By the time they reach their final owner they are highly stressed and very often too far gone to save. I'm afraid the one you have there is no exception, its very thin and probably hasn't eaten since it left China. Healthy captive bred ones are often available in the for sale section of the forum, you just need a little patients until they are available.
This link is quite old but still very relevant today, unfortunately.
Caudata.org People: Jen - The Pet Shop Firebelly Newt Tragedy
As far as the tank goes, All they need to be happy is clean cold water that's stuffed with plants, really rammed full to begin with so there seems to be more plants than water. You should be aiming for a dense mat of leaves and stems on the surface so the newt can almost walk on them. The plants are needed to begin with as these kinds of aquatic newts have often gone into a terrestrial faze as a reaction to the foul conditions they are kept in during importation and have lost their tail fins, this means that they could actually drown. They will often refuse to enter deep open water unless there are loads of plants to hang on to. Once the newt recovers it will regrow its tail fin and be quite safe in deep water, but firebellies are dependent on heavy plant growth to be happy so there should always be plenty of greenery for them to hang out in.
If I were you I would remove the rocks and all the substrate to begin with as it just traps dirt and makes cleaning a nightmare while the tank is cycling. Just ram the plants in. The type of plants aren't really important, as I said before the cheap pondweed bunches that petstores carry are fine, just remove the lead weights and let them grow across the surface.
Given enough plants the filter isn't needed, Chinese firebellies hate water movement of any kind, so a still tank is best to begin with. Once the newt recovers you can remove some of the plants and add rocks if you want, but things like that means there's less water volume in the tank, so are kind of a waste of space really.
Led lights are excellent for newt tanks because they run much cooler than fluorescent tubes, I use Beamswork or Marineland ones, but I used fluorescent ones for years without problems. I just cut some slots in the hoods I was using to allow the heat, but not the newts to escape.
This thread has most of the info you need so have a good read and use the search function, there is years and years of info to go at but don't be afraid to ask questions, if there'a anything at all you are unsure about.
http://www.caudata.org/forum/f46-be...-new-chinese-fire-belly-newts-not-eating.html
