Method for feeding large amount of juves

[ian]

I now have 30+ juvenile T marmoratus, with lots more to come, at first i was trying to feed them on small pieces of earth worm with a cocktail stick, not only was it hard finding enough small worms- even the worms i bought in, most of them were too big- but only a couple of the critters showed interest and i was spending hours trying one after the other.With at least another 50 to come i was desperate to find an easier more productive way.I decided to "mist" a shallow dish and rinse a bag of blood worm and put them in. I waited until it had been dark a couple of hours and snook in with a torch to see what was happening. To my delight there was about ten in the dish feeding and by morning hardly any blood worm left.I have been using this method a few days now with good results, the blood worm stay alive for days and as long as there is only a misting of water the newts are quite happy to get in the dish and eat. Hopefully as they get bigger they will progress onto earth worms and save me a bit of money.

 

[TJ]

Sounds great, Ian. Any photos of them in the dish (I'd like to see how shallow it is, etc.)? I used to have C. ensicauda juvies "trained" to eat frozen bloodworm out of a dish. These days I'm using fruitflies for the smaller ones and waxworms for the bigger ones. With my marmoratus though, I feed even the smaller ones waxworms.

 

[ian]

Tim i'll try to get a photo later for you. The dish i am using is the type used for standing plant pots in ,less than one inch deep. You must be using lesser wax worm are you , unless your juves are a lot bigger than mine. How did you train yours to eat frozen blood worm mine need to see the food moving.

 

[paris]

my experience with marms is the new morphs are semi aquatic in shallow water-so i give them live black worms and daphnia and occasionally fruit flies in a mess of elodea in about 1/2" water and they feed them selves.