New > need help!

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heather

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just the other day i bought three fire bellied newts they are quite small only about two inches long. i keep them in a ten gallon tank mostly land with a waterbowl big enough for them to completely submerse themselves, the prefer the land. At the pet store i bought them at they were feeding them bloodworms in this nutrient gel stuff, they were unable to sell any to me but reccommended daphnia in the gel stuff, i also bought a large ammount of brine shrimp (live)
i put a bunch in their water bowl, but im not sure that they are eating it since they hardly go in the water .is this a good food source for them?
for substrate i have sand and some river rocks on top, they sitll get sand all over them and it seems to stick to them is that bad for them, i am getting some nice live moss to cover a few areas in their tank......
please if anyone can give me some advice about them...i need help!
 
You should change the tank so it's mostly aquatic but shallow because it seems like you are dealing with juveniles. Live daphnia are better than anything else for little newts. Some people have had success with moina, simmilar to daphnia. When they grow up frozen or life bloodworms with the occasional earthworm is good. When they feel like it they will go completely aquatic.
 
ben> i have a lot of water in there but it is mostly land because they hardly ever go in the water...thankyou for the advice though.
i will have to get a picture of their set-up for you.
 
Here is a picture of their tank
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grrr my pictures always come out so big!
 
what is the temp in that tank? since you are in hawaii-i am suspecting room temp can be about 75 there-since that 10 gallon tank has a closed lid with what appears to be an incandescent light-it may be as high as 85-90 in there. even with a flourescent light the temp will raise more than youd think. id skip out on the sand at the bottom -do a layer of charcoal and then a layer of those same rocks you have. you can keep the plant in a pot that you set down into the rocks. big thing though is the temp-this will put them off food and cause serious health problems. best to keep a thermometer inside the tank so you can see it from the outside-this will tell you true temp-if it is calibrated right. i keep mine in an aquatic set up with lots of live plants-its about 65 F and they have a few lilly pads to climb out on as well as resting on the submerged anacharis. you set up is good for firebelly frogs but it will need modified for newts and then it will do fine if they are already acclimated and good eaters- for picky eaters and shy newts it will take some more modification. check out the housing section of this page http://www.caudata.org/cc/species/Cynops/C_orientalis.shtml
 
Hi,
You should feed them earthworms, buy canadian nightcrawlers or european nightcrawlers and cut in small pieces. If you want to monitor them, put the earthworm pieces on a small stick that penetrates them. Make the earthworm pieces big enough so that they wiggle on the stick
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Push the stick through the worms so that they cannot get off. This way you know exactly where they should be(the pieces) and if the newts have eaten or not. The water/land ration is good I think, but get rid of the sand! Put soil in there!
I bet the orientalis would like more shallow hidings than a coconut shell too, try a piece of cork bark that they can crawl under.
Moina suits very small larvae, Daphnia suits larger larvae. when they morph they are already earthworm ready(very good basal food).
 
Paris> it is definately not 90 degrees in their tank, i live way up on Haleakala Mountain and it is very very very cold up here! right now it is 60 degrees inside our house, the tank has a mesh lid that allows for good ventalation and i never turn thier light on
Jesper> I am very sure that i cant get ahold of any of those types of night crawlers(im in hawaii) i can dig up earthworms in my back yard though
my axolotls love the earthworms but i cant get my newts to touch em
they wont eat anything it seems like!
 
try switching over to aquatic-it works well for alot of us-its in the article i linked to. i did this for mine years ago and it was the only way of getting them to eat and be more active-they eat by smell in the water and wont have similar behaviour on land. i dont have a photo of mine on hand but im sure jenni or others have one to post for you.
 
Hi Heather,
Despite the american common names these worms do not originate in Canada and Europe. They are international creatures
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Go to a bait shop and buy worms...It's a good chance that they sell big worms that are not Eisenia fetida i.e. Red wigglers. Worms from your backyard is probably canadian nightcrawlers(deep). In the top layers of soil you will probably find european nightcrawlers too. In compost you will find Red wigglers etc etc.
Believe me I am quite used to terrestrial pet shop orientalis that are bad eaters... They will eat worms. Newts can stay without food for two weeks no problem....
I doubt that you have juvies, aren't they like 6-7cm? That's a small adult c.o.
My eggs just hatched 10 days ago and they already starting to go for Daphnia Magna. Greedy bastards.
I'll probably have them on earthworms BEFORE they morph. Do as I said and they will start eating within a week if they are not very ill.

If you really want them to go for a worm I suggest you put something "smelly" like blood or meat(not you own! :D) on the same stick as the worm piece to turn on the predator in them while seeing the worms wiggle.
 
Yeah they are about 6/7 cm. How big are fully grown adults?
they never seem to go in the water much, they hang out on the land more than anything.So i dont see how a completely aquatic habitat would make them happy.
 
Hi,
Your are pretty much adult then, about 6-9cm are adult. Keep them terrestrial as long as they prefer it terrestrial, you'll notice when they go aquatic. I highly doubt that these newts are as aquatic as people seem to think. I believe they have long terrestrial phases in their adult life too. Nobody seems to have studied them really...
Ironic as this is one of the most common pet shop newt and still it is a pretty much unknown species.....
 
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I noticed that one of my newts, the one i suspect to be the male, has an arm that looks fatter than the rest. i think its a bit swollen. I cant be sure what happened exactly. I think that my brother was holding one (while I fixed something in their tank) and he may have dropped it about Three or Four inches from the floor. Would that be Enough to break His arm if he landed on it funny? Although it may have been like this before I bought him, I suspect it was my brother....
please help me!!
 
<font color="ff0000">This thread will soon be moved to the help section of this site -- Tim</font>
 
I dropped a CFB four feet on to a concrete floor once, (completely by accident, it crawled out of the net as I was taking it out). It was completely unnaffected. In the wild many newts would be picked up and dropped by animals who are expecting to find a good snack but then find out that newts don't taste all that great.
 
Could it be an infection??its the right arm
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i cannot get a clear picture of his leg but i will keep trying
 
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