Mysterious death...

[dannie]

I had my pair of tarichas for around 5 months and all was well. Last week I noticed mating behavior but I'm not sure how long they'd been doing this. About ten minutes ago I went to water the plants in their terrarium and noticed the female laying at the bottom of the water dish feet at her sides, eyes glazed and her abdomen was somewhat large. There weren't any battle scars...nothing. The water was clean apart from bits of moss floating in it. My question is how she could have possibly died. I fed her a wax worm two days ago, could she have gotten a bad one? Did she need to lay eggs but no plants were provided so she couldn't? I'm a little dumbfounded. Any ideas appreciated.

 

[pin-pin]

That is mysterious.

I've heard of Notophthalmus drowning their partners during mating, but never a Taricha.

 

[jennifer]

It is not unusual for the abdomen to swell a bit when a newt dies in the water. I have no idea why it died though. If she needed to lay eggs, she would have layed them somewhere, I doubt that was the problem.

 

[jeff]

Do you know the temperature at or shortly before time of death?

 

[dannie]

Pin-pin:
I don't think they were mating prior to her death. I had checked on them about 30 minutes before I noticed her dead and she was lying in her favorite spot in the dirt underneath the water dish.

Jennifer:
I was curious about the abdomen because she had been getting larger recently..leading to thought of eggs but I agree that she would have laid them regardless.

Jeff:
The temperature of the terrarium has been in the mid 70s.