Forest vivarium for longtails

[KevinS]

I'll be keeping a few Eurycea l. longicauda juveniles as part of my thesis research, so I got a 10 gallon tank set up for them today. I realize it's a little large for juveniles and I probably won't see them much due to all the hiding areas, but I've already seeded it with earthworms, isopods, and springtails (along with whatever may have been living in the leaf litter and forest soil I added) so I'm hoping they'll feed themselves for the most part. Anyway, here's a picture. I realize it's nothing too fancy, but it's my first attempt at a naturalistic setup so try to be gentle with the criticism.

All of the materials were collected from around my house, which saved me a lot of trouble. There's a layer of gravel at the bottom for drainage, followed by a sheet of landscaping fabric. I covered that with topsoil dug from the forest around our house and mixed in a lot of leaf litter. It might be hard to tell from the picture, but there are several layers of cover. Under that slab of bark at the back are two flat stones which overlap with three sheets of moss. I included the branch in case they felt like foraging off the ground. I know I've seen several up on cave walls so I thought I'd give them the option of some arboreal activity, but I don't know if they'll use it or not.

One thing I'm mulling over is whether or not I need a water dish. On the one hand I'd like to give them the option of entering some shallow water, but I tend to find them far away from water in very terrestrial situations so I'm not sure how much they'd appreciate it. I'll also be keeping it very damp, so I don't think they'll necessarily need one, but I'd be interested in hearing opinions from anyone else who has kept terrestrial plethodontids.

 

[Jennewt]

Looks great to me! I'm not experienced with Plethodontids, but I have a suggestion for keeping the population of inverts going in the tank. Put a flat rock somewhere accessible and sprinkle a bit of fish food under the rock every couple of days. This will serve as a refugium that will give the inverts a place to reproduce w/o being eaten to oblivion.

 

[KevinS]

Looks great to me! I'm not experienced with Plethodontids, but I have a suggestion for keeping the population of inverts going in the tank. Put a flat rock somewhere accessible and sprinkle a bit of fish food under the rock every couple of days. This will serve as a refugium that will give the inverts a place to reproduce w/o being eaten to oblivion.

Thanks for the tip. I'm already considering making a more uniform floor of moss on top of the leaf litter and placing a few stones and bark slabs on top of that for easier access. I may wait and see how shy the salamanders are before I do that though.