Japanese firebelly escaping and not eating

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xoom

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I got a japanese firebelly from petco last week after researching them here. From what I know he has not eaten since I took him from the store.

I filled his tank with deer park water, got a fluval canister filter, got artificial plants that he sits on all day (since it seems he does not enjoy the water all that much...?)

I also got him a pack of frozen baby brine shrimp that i put a piece of the ice in the tank, but i cannot see the brine shrimp, very small, so he may be eating that...( its not getting sucked up by the filter since i only turn the filter on every once in awhile)

Yesterday he started something new, he started scaling the glass walls of my 10 gallon aquarium and since then has gotten onto the floor 4 times, luckily he has been caught and put back in the water and seems to be ok.

Can anyone tell me how he has survived for 2 weeks if he has not eaten and how we can convince him not to escape. maybe another newt will help?

Also, I have land for him, I bought a flat smooth rock that sticks out of the water ~2cm.
Xoom

(Message edited by Xoom on March 25, 2004)
 
Escaping newts are usually kept in an environment they disagree with(obviously...).
Check out the water quality in your tank. Test putting him in a more terrestrial setup to check if that is what he is looking for.
Give him some live food that is somewhat bigger than bbs which is used for newly hatched larvae.
Worms in a terrestrial setup is my suggestion.

I suppose it is a chinese firebelly - cynops orientalis? Post a pic or tell us the size of the animal or if the belly "spots" are irregular or more round(there's plenty of pics on this site and caudata culture to compare with) and we can probably help you out with that.

Any signs of illness?
 
I would like to add that most cynops orientalis I have owned have been more terrestrial than aquatic if given the choice. I try to give my newts the choice of how to live - I have noticed that most of mine will have terrestrial/aquatic phases just like in nature if given the choice.

Maybe I just have very stubborn newts which have forced me to do things their way
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The spots on the bottom of my newt are more irregular than round and are splotchy, if that is a word. What exactly do i need to test my water? ph etc...

I'm about to head out the door now to the local baitshop to find worms for him. I was thinking blackworms or bloodworms, ill see what i can find. I do not have my camera, my parents took it on vaction but i will be getting it back on sunday so i will put pictures of my aquarium up and until then will try and think of a way to give him more land.
 
How about size? Roughness of the skin?
Hehe, if you are thinking bloodworms or blackworms it must be an orientalis or a juvenile pyrrhogaster
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i just went over to petco its a pyrrhogaster

gonna stop and get a testing kit for my tank on the way home from work, what should i get? ph chlorine ....???

he's about 1 1/2 - 2"
 
I can only say one thing:
Why do you ask petco! They probably just read in the papers who they got from the distributor and the distributor probably just thought:
Well it's not a fish! I remember back in the days when there were these things around called japanese firebellys, hmmm I think I will call him japanese firebelly.
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I'd guess that 90% of the newts sold as pyrrhogaster are orientalis. Why? Because pyrrhogaster is protected in Japan nowadays, orientalis is not protected in China so they started buying those instead. The importers obviously haven't cared enough to change the papers since.

Anyway, you will need a Nitrate kit. Buy pH papers or something like it I think a pH kit is a waste of money. You will probably need to check pH though.

Well you have got a small juvenile there then.
 
ok i just got home and tested my nitrate, couldnt find pH strips.. my nitrate is ~.15 What level does it need to be? what should i do to change it? Originaly Deer Park Spring water
 
Xoom, so many issues here...

1. Please make sure his tank lid is now 100% secure! What kind of lid do you have? All gaps must be sealed. Another escape could be fatal. Getting another newt will not help, they don't care about companionship.

2. Why do you run the filter only sometimes?

3. He may have never eaten, they can go for weeks. Any luck with any of the worms? You may need to hand-feed with a toothpick or tweezers.

4. The tank is too new for nitrate to be an issue. Ammonia would be the thing to test for at this point. But if you have only one newt, a good filter, and you remove all uneaten food, the water should be fine.
 
1. i now have heavy college textbooks securing the lid 24/7 so no more escapes. Wanted another anyways but i really shouldve wait till i got this one settled in.

2. I do not run the filter all the time because they seem to get irritated when it is running

3. I have set aside time tommorrow morning to goto a local bait shop to get bloodworms or blackworms or any worm you can suggest to me by then.

4. I will start running the filter 24/7 and see if they react very well to it. It just seems that when the filter is on they do not like to be in the water at all. Thay may be because i do not have enough land for them. that will also be fixed

Xoom
 
Hmmm, about the nitrate...
I don't know about you Jen but I always use biological filtering and add bacteria cultures at the start of a new tank so I never think of ammonia or nitrite as problems...
Anyway, I suppose you have got a canister filter?
Put a big swab of filter material around the water intake - this will be a perfect "splitting" ground for bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrate through nitrite. Diffuse the the water output from the filter to make a waterfall somewhere or diffuse it(I think Jen had a nice pic of her method of diffusing somewhere), this will enable you to have a strong filter without any current in the water.
After you have done this you can use your kit as a nitrogen control and hopefully the newts will enjoy the water too.
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Hi Jesper, Xoom I have some thoughts for you further down,
If you are using the commercial brands of bacterial starter cultures these as far as I know do not usually have the correct strains of bacteria to run the nitrogen cycle. Nitrobacter* may not be the bacterial needed to convert nitrite to nitrate in this cycle but instead strains of Nitrospira appear to be the required species/strains. (As far as I know there has been no determination on the shelf life for the "jump start" cultures often used by the fish hobbyist and anecdotally these often appear to be badly degraded). In my experience unless I am hooking up a completely cycled filter to a new tank, I have always seen a small spike in ammonia and nitrite in the tanks. As you have mentioned in one of your previous posts in a different thread, getting the plants established before the adding the animals can go a long way towards preventing these problems from ever occurring.
But another thought for you on this topic is that as plants prefer to assimilate ammonia as opposed to nitrite and nitrate and in many species will not assimilate nitrite and nitrate unless the supply of ammonia is not readily available or is insufficient, if you heavily plant your tanks why do you need bacterial starter cultures? An additional point is that the leaves of the plants are often heavily colonized by these bacteria.

I would also point out that if the nitrate levels after only two weeks are 0.15 ppm, then I would strongly suspect the ammonia and/or nitrite to be exceedingly high (is this what you were thinking Jesper?). Those levels would discourage the newt from entering or staying in the water.

Xoom, in general , test strips are not that accurate as they are very prone to error and only read as present in a wide range. I personally prefer the Dry-Tab Test Kits for many reasons (one is how long I've been using them, decades now....) but people often find these to be more expensive than other brands. There are some that use liquid drops and these will often be accurate enough so you have a good idea of what the levels actually are in the tank.
To start off with I strongly recommend a ammonia, nitrite, and pH test kit. A nitrate test kit is useful as it helps gauge how often water changes need to be performed and if the nitrification cycle is working properly. Ammonia and nitrite are toxic to aquatic animals and should be monitored on a somewhat regular basis and checked whenever aberrant behaviors are noted in a newt.

Ed

* Hovance, T.A.; Taylor, L.TA.Blakis, A.; Delong, E.F.; 1998, Nitrosira-like bacteria associated with nitrite oxidation in freshwater aquaria; Appl. Enviromental Microbiology 64:258-264

Burrell, P.C.; Phalen, C.M.; Hovanec, T.A.; 2001; Identification of bacteria responsible for ammonia oxidation in freshwater aquaria; Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 67: 5791-5800
 
Besides what everyone else is saying about testing the water...My newt was first hanging out in the land/dry area most of the time. The first two newts I had hung out on the walls and died
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Anyway. I asked some people on this site jennewt being one of them and I found that some of the problem with him hanging out in the dry area was the set up. He would let his skin dry out.

I now have no dry areas, but I have shallow areas the newt can come up and kind of stand on for air and I have less stuff crowding him. I have very little gravel in the tank. Just some in the corner and down the side a little for a plant and then some gravel for his bowl that has more plants, the tank stays cleaner that way. He's improved so much. He doesn't hide ALL the time now and he hardly ever climbs the wall. He's done it like twice after a water change. Even though I use dechlorinator (sp?) (and let it sit for 24 hours)and bottled spring water, I think sometimes the conditioned tap still has something sometimes that bugs him.

Also what do you have in it's tank, if you have anything that's plastic it may smell or feel strange to the newt, I would take it out and smell it. Good luck.
 
hey jess sorry about your little jap newt. i have both jap & chinese newts in a 30. i use a micro- filter with fresh water changes weekly. also add stress coat to water. feed crickets & live meal worms. they only seem to eat every few days. get him a friend.
 
Bruce sorry I didn't make myself clear, all the newts I owned were Chinese Firebellied Newts. I didn't get mine from Petco but another not so knowing chain store that did mislabel them as Japanese Firebellied Newts. Only after researching I found them to be CFBN's. But I think due to great help on this site my current newt seems to be thriving
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Yo Ed,
Hey, I am behind in a lot of discussions we have had.... I will get back to you on those as fast as I have time(This summer?
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).

First off I use starter cultures(commercial) only when the tank is not cycled. Very interesting point you raise there about strains, my cultures just say that the bacteria within metabolize nitrite and ammonia.
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About the pH test strips, the ones I use aren't very exact but they are exact enough for my purposes. Don't you guys at the zoo use a pH meter?? I use one when necessary.
When it come to my tanks I feel that I just need to know whether it is 6,5 - 7 - 7,5 etc.
It's a whole other thing when it comes to my chromatography columns...
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About the nitrate....I have always wondered why PPM is used for a dissolved chemical?? It is a volume/volume unit made for gases if I remember correctly. I really don't know how ppm correlates to mg/l or mol/l since I do not know the volume of a NO3- ion dissolved in water.

For what it is worth:
0,15 ppm is a very very very low number, for a planted tank you want to keep it around 5-10ppm.
It becomes toxic to fish at around 40 ppm.

What is deer park water?

How can your tank possibly have so low nitrates?
Your little friend will most likely have taken some dumps and emptied the pressure every now and then. You have also added food. Shortly ammonia has been added to the tank - you have no plants to take up ammonia.

Two possible solutions:
1.No ammonia has been converted to nitrate, the ammonia must be very high.
2.You have a hell of a lot of algae that consumes all the nitrate.

I never worry about ammonia and nitrite since they are nonexistent in tanks with plants and working filters thus I would never spend money on those test kits.

Get some real plants....

I'd say that such a little orientalis morph that you seem to have will prefer a terrestrial setup.
In my experience orientalis is a quite terrestrial species and there is nothing wrong with my water!
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Hi Jesper,
No problem, It can wait until whenever you have time. I'm out of work due to a shoulder injury right now so I have too much time on my hands for the moment.

As for the bacterial cultures, that is typical of the marketing for the live fish trade. There has long been controversy as to which bacterial species actually were part of the nitrification process. As it turns out under PCR analysis Nitrobacter lacks the genes to code for the enzymes to convert nitrite to nitrate while a commonly overlooked species (Nitrospira) does have the genes for this process. Even if the tank is not cycled as the cultures do not contain Nitrospira this does not really help with the cycling process. Stirring up the substrate of an established tank and transferring some of the water would be more effective as this would be a suspension of the various bacteria dislodged from the established biofilm. Or the addition of live plants as the plants not only will absorb the ammonia but the biofilm of the plant will be colonized by the nitrifying bacteria.

Nope, when we purchased the water testing gear, the budget did not support a good pH meter and the calibration fluids. Also the concern was raised by the vets as to how to disinfect the meter so it could be used between enclosures (vets are not always rational). But as the test strips are not accurate enough to keep the vets happy we use the Dry-Tab Test kits by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals.
Out of the tap our tap water tends to be about a pH of 7.3 with a calcium hardness of 120 ppm so something significant has to occur to my systems at work to drop the pH (and the hardness!).
Most amphibians are well content with a pH of 6.5-7.5 but the reason I recommend a pH kit when breaking in a new system is due to the changes in concentration between ammonium and ammonia at the different pHs and the resulting change in toxicity of ammonia. (Its also useful in old systems to make sure that the pH hasn't dropped enough to mess with the nitrification cycle).

Well, as I remember it, ppm for solutions is really not a volume/volume unit but a weight/volume unit as it is equivalent to mg/l.

Deer park water is one of the many "spring" waters sold for the US market.

I think her tank is so low in nitrates as it has only been up and running for a couple of weeks so my suspicion is that the ammonia/nitrite end of it is very high.

Well, until there is sufficent plant biomass (and sufficent light to drive the plant growth) and/or the filter cycles I would say that it is possible to get an excess of ammonia and nitrite in a planted tank.
 
Aha, so someone out there has concluded ppm is equal to mg/l? I had no idea, I was very confused actually since it is not logical at all.

Parts per million is a fraction! IE volume/volume, mass/mass etc. I am pretty sure it was first used for gases in gas since the volume of a gas reflects its concentration under constant conditions. And then some smart guy comes along saying well lets use it as mg/l, duh!
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If anyone could explain the logic in that I would appreciate it.

Mol/l(Molar) is the only good unit for concentrations of solutes in solution
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Ed, I sort of took it for granted they(the cultures) worked since they guarantee they work...

Lol, I thought he had run down to a park to collect the water at first. The low nitrate gave away the truth though.

By the way Ed, I thought you would never say something like stirring up substrate from an old tank and mixing it in a new one...

Ok, we can conclude this by saying that ya won't need those kits if you use real plants for a week or two before adding animals or if you simply start up your tank with nitrospira bacteria cultures!

Or one can buy those kits for ammonia, nitrite and pH then buy plants or nitrospira cultures eh?

About the ammonia/ammonium shift, if you have a nice buffer in the water(high kH, like here) your pH will be quite high and buffered in that position. Ammonia has a pKA of about 9, meaning that ammonia is the predominating form above 9, about 50% at pH 9, about 10% at pH 8 and about 1% at pH 7 - very roughly...
 
Hi Jesper,
That is why I specified in my second post how it supposedly applies to solutions. Here is a web page that has some interesting conversions to ppm ( http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_ppm.htm ).

All I can say is that was the equivalence I read. If I get ambitious I could do some preliminary calculations.

All of the units including molarity is a fraction. The units are just different. (look at molarity which is avogadro's number of a substance dissolved in enough water to make one liter of solution). Personally I prefer molarity to molality. But if you want to talk pain in the neck, osmolaity (unit osmol, OsM) is a real pain as it is the number of active particles dissolved in 1 l of solution and particles that contain multiple ions with multiple disassociation constants are a real pain in the neck to figure out.

Lots of people believe the hype on these addiatives but as I had access to some literature discussing this I figured I should save you (and anyone else) some money. I'm not surprised that they guarantee them to work as cycling is a variable process and can take up to several months to complete the process and the nitrifying bacteria would colonize the aquarium anyway within that time frame. It would be very difficult to prove that the additive did not work. You would be able to add a better starter culture by suspending some healthy soil in water allowing the soil to settle out (or pour it through a coffee filter) and adding that to the tank.

Sometimes shortcuts need to be taken to prevent the loss of animals. In general, it is better to not contaminate between tanks, due to parasites and skin toxins but there are always the exceptions. As I mentioned in a post in a different thread, in general I am not concerned with bacterial contamination as the majority of bacteria that are pathnogenic in amphibians are a part of the normal (and generally healthy) flora and fauna of our enclosures.

I won't quite go so far to tell a newbie that they don't need those kits as they lack the experience necessary to judge normal and/or healthy behaviors opposed to behaviorrs brought on by stress.

Unfortunately, there are no commercial suppliers of Nitrospira for the pet trade. You might be able to get cultures from some of the research facilities but as I understand it these bacteria are not the easiest to culture.

With the ammonia, it is still possible to reach lethal levels at a pH of 7 but as you noted it is a log scale and at a pH of 6 it will roughly be a concentration of about 0.1% (and consequently that much harder to reach toxic concentrations) so if you do not know the hardness of the water you should check and monitor the pH.

Ed
 
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