I can't identify the exact species of my rescued newt!

J

jeff

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Last august, I was down in seattle for a few days, and me and my girlfriend ran into these black kids who had these 2 salamders in a tiny little plastic aquarium. It's only about 85 degrees out and they had about a half inch of water and about 1 cm of gravel. To make things better they claimed that they were going to "flush them" in order to get a hampster. God i hate rodents. Anyway, I ended up trading them an old game boy for the pair, and starting trying to fiqure out what the hell to do with these guys. Its been alot of trial an error, and one sadly passed away last month. I have them set up in quite a grand habbitat, dispite the stupied sugestions my pet store made, such as "putting a 25 watt light bulb in" to make them "more active". so i cant identify my reamining newt, who is quite happy and freindly with the little CFB that ride around on his back from time to time.

I would clissify him as a Taricha Granulosa (rough skinned) or Taricha torosa (california newt) im not sure about the naming thing, i think he is from the genus torosa, but I don't know what species. I have looked at alot of photos, and the looks just like the califonia newt, down to the eyelids and everything, but he also looks just like a rough skinned, with is native to bassically the same region. anyone have any ideas on how to figure this out, I know he came from a petco in seattle, whos manager i talked to , but she said it was a paddletail, which it is clearly not. HELP!! I wish i could find my stupied digital camara, but these pics i attached all look like him.<center><table border=1><tr><td>
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pictues of similer newts
2 picsnewt.doc (182.8 k)</td></tr></table></center>
 
Hi Jeff,

Congrats, you have a pretty cute Taricha granulosa. They've got a great personality and are easy to take care of.

The one thing I would suggest is that you separate the cfb from it. While they are friendly now, mixing two animals who are from different continents puts both at danger in terms of diseases/parasites/etc.
 
oh yeah,I forgot, this link http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/narcam/idguide/ttorosa.htm

Shows some good pics and discriptions of torosa species, which don't really look like my specimen. I fear that it's possbile that I have a newt that is illegle to sell in my state beacuse the rough skinned grandulosa is protected by my state laws. Someone please help me figure this out, I am quite confused!
 
Show us a pic of the newt, because I have had rough skinned newts in the past.
 
You really need to seperate them. If it is a rough skinned newt then they come from different parts of the world and you don't know were this newt came from in the first place. It could be wild caught and release diease to your other newts and kill all three of them.
 
Granulosa toxin isn't exactly mild and then there's the size difference etc etc. You should separate them no doubt.
 
actually, I have had the rough skin for over 5 months, and i put the 2 juvenile CFBs in 6 weeks ago after 2 weeks of isolation. I have a really good filtration system, and I really think they all will be fine as long as I keep everything nice and clean, despite the many horror stories I have heard. However, I am upset this guy is being sold in this state, as it is within his natural range and habitat. I will post a pic as soon as we find the camera, as I need that card. Thanks for the help!
 
You referred to the Taricha as "him". During mating season, a male Taricha will go into amplexus (clasp) anything in sight with amazing tenacity. CFB are not normally involved in any amplexus and could be stressed, at the very least.
 
yeah sorry for this mess, now if my tank is big enough and the water gets changed, and really filtered, won't the skin toxin not matter? I mean he's in and out of water, and spends 2/3s of his time in the water thats activly being flitered, how much toxin is going to build up/be present. I really want the best for my grandulosa and my 2 CFBs, but one of the FBs spends all his time on land, with rare exceptions, so at least he is safe right? I would seperate them if I had another aquarium, and filter system, but I have no space, no extra newt money, and no more outlets to futher split up. I don't want to be a bad newt owner but I don't want to split everyone up into cheesy setups. Im kinda out of ideas right now.
Oh yeah and I'll stop responding to this thread.
 
yeah he likes to clasp my finger, but he's never made a pass at the newts, I think they're too small, plus they can swim about 10 times as fast. So how much posion is the granulosa actually releasing? Is it stress related and will filtration an water changing keep the newts from being "poisoned"?
 
wow, It claims that my species has the highest ammount of poison. Thats kinda cool, but kinda scary. It says however that the toxin is in fact realesed apon stress(identified by defensive posture). I have seen him do this a few times, but no more then once every few weeks, and I think it has something to do with things that piss him off outside the tank (i.e. my cat who loves to watch him). If that is the case then I suppose 99% of the time he should yeild a vastly less ammoutn of toxin, that I hope is dilluted and filtered, and hopefully removed by water changes.

by the way, I was at the local fish store tonight, the huge non-corperate one that sells almost all fish. They had treefroogs in with FBTs and FBNs, with some other toads. I don't get it, they have like 50 aquariums and the one with amphibians has all 4 species. There was this little dead frog that was sitting in the water. Its just sad that they cant at least seperate the species a little. oh well
 
Well I have never actually been to the store, but I beleive it was a petco in the greenwood area of Seattle. I was told that they were selling "paddletails" at the time I rescued him, but he is definately not one of those.
Here is a cheesy picture of him.
28349.jpg
 
Opps, I forgot to clarify the incident I discussed earlier about that store with the frogs, newts, and treefrogs all in the same tank, witht he dead frogs in there as well. The name of that store is "Clarks seed and feed" but is really a huge fish store, with no kidding 200 plus tanks, all with one or two species of fish each. I told the guy the newts were obviously being stressed from the temp/huge frogs. He said it "wasn't a problem" I told him it was beacuse one the frogs was dead and rotting. Im going back to check on it and I will post a new posting in general disscuss.
Anyho, I finally got a really good picture of my Taricha. Here it is, and there is a small water jet near him that looks like glass, ignore it. Check out the ridge on the tail
28738.jpg
I thinks he may be californian subspecies, but I can't quite tell. Any ideas?
 
if the newt in the picture came from the seattle area and was wild caught, it is definitely granulosa. torosa isnt found that far north
 
You aren't making a ton of sense to me... Taricha granulosa are most certainly found in Washington, as the range map you reference indicates. Would you care to clarify?

My guess is that its T. granulosa based on its appearance, and that those are fairly common in pet stores, or probably wouldn't be too hard for some kids to find in eastern Washington.
 
OK, let my try to clear this up, I meant
that he's technically found in washington, but if was was collected and sold in washington then that would be so illegle that there is no way he would be sold at a downtown seattle petco, which is where he is thought to be from.

petco unfortunatly won't give me any information or phone numbers to find out. I have considered threatening them with the notion that they broke the law.. I might try it for fun

by the way, the moderator can delete the really old fuzzy picture I posted here a while back if its taking up space, but I would love it if you left the really nice picture. Thanks
 
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  • Katia Del Rio-Tsonis:
    sorry I am having a hard time trying to upload the pictures- I have them saved on my hard drive... any suggestions-the prompts here are not allowing for downloads that way as far as I can tell. Thanks
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    Katia Del Rio-Tsonis: sorry I am having a hard time trying to upload the pictures- I have them saved on my hard... +1
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