Newbie with fire belly newt problem

D

desiree

Guest
hey everyone, i hope that you can help me out.. i just got into the world of newts and decided to start with a fire bellynewt..anyways, here's my problem, he/she?? doesn't seam to be eating, at all...even though i've had it for almost 4 months... it's has gotten really skinny lately, to the point that i can see it's spine etc.. and when i first brought it home, i had it with a frog (not sure what kind) and the frog ended up biting off its leg..finally now it's starting to grow back.. however when it moves or swims, it's really awakrd looking and clutzy and un coordinated.. sometimes it just lays there on its side.. i dont think this is normal newt behavior, but i am also not sure what's wrong with it and what i should do.. i have been trying to feed it a couple of different "store bought pellets" or the tubiflex cubes that were all reccomended by different pet store people. i tried getting him some live worms last week, or the things that i have been reading about on this site to feed them, but it doesn't seam that this small town that i live in carries anything of such sort.. please help me out, it would be greatly appreciated..THANKS! :D
oh and i bought another one yesterday, significantly smaller then the one i have now, but it's not eating, just assuming though that it's understress because of the move..
oh and i was also wondering, i dont have a filter for my tank, but i do clean the tank once a week...on some other sites it was telling me to clean the tank daily if i dont have a filter..just wondering what i should REALLY do ;)
thanks again
-dez
 
This is the best site you can go to for newts, the other people don't know what they're talking about. I'm glad you separated it from the frog. Newts generally don't eat newt pellets because the don't know that they are food. If you had lived your whole life biting at anything smaller than you that moved or smelled like food and then some body dropped a freeze dried pellet of fish derevitives in front of you, would you think it was food? Most pet shop newts are violently torn from the wild and shipped in crammed conditions. Your newt's lying on its side and clutsy movements are very far from normal. Out of interest, what temperature do you keep it at? It would be best to keep it around 18ºc. Try and get it some live earthworms from your back yard. I'm sure if your pet shop has tubifex they must have blood worms, also known as red mosquito larvae, live and frozen are both good foods for your newts. What are the actual sizes of your two newts?
 
well my whole "backyard" is covered in snow :p so no earth worms there.. they had tubifex worms in "squares" .. and there was nothing that was live or frozen except for meal worms... i try to keep the temperature at about 20 degrees ... however it being really cold here, the room temperature is significantly colder than normal. i do have a halogen lamp on it, but it's almost 20cm above the tank one is about 9cm long and the other about 5 or 6 cm long, including tail..the smaller one is the new one.. the longer one is the one with a missing leg/foot
 
Those sound like typical CFB sizes, looks like your stuck with no way to get anything they will eat for them. Why don't you go to a fishing bait store, get some night crawlers, chop them up into little peices and feed them to your newts. You can try feeding them meal worms as well, but they're not that good. 20º is a good temperature, but colder, especialy for stressed animals is better. What's your room temperature, I've watched my newts be perfectly active 4ºc (in an out door shed), I've heard of people on this forum breeding them at 9ºc.
 
meal worms just gross me out, back at home, my brother has a gecko and has to feed it meal worms...lol, i'm such a girl! the room temperature fluxates between 10-18 degrees, depending on how moody my room mate is ;) ..so do you think that the lamp is a bad idea? someone else had suggested it to me because before they would NEVER move..just sit there... and once i placed the lamp on the tank, it started to move and swim etc..was SO much more exciting..anyways, .. do they ususally not move much? like right now one is sitting under water and the other is sitting on top of him but in the plants.. i think they're bonding *aww*... however the one under water is the sick one and he hasn't even moved to breath or anything of that sort....
-dez
 
They shouldn't move that much. When you said warm lamp I thought you meant something like a basking lamp used for heating reptiles, like a 40 or 60 watt incandescent bulb. Newts generally don't depend on light to raise body temperature and will move with out it. If you have plants you do of coarse need a light source. A halogen lamp shouldn't do any harm If you turn it on and off for a night and day effect. Meal worms should fatten it up fast, though it would be much better if you could get some night crawlers and chop them into pieces, though seeing as you are squeamish you may not want to chop them, but the desire to keep your animals alive should override squeamishness.
 
hehe, yeah i know.. the lamp DOES make a difference in the temperature of the tank though..but i'll keep it on there for the time being, heating wasn't the main point of actually placing the lamp there in the first place..but we'll see how it all works out..thanks for your advice!
happy.gif

-dez
 
:'( he was dead... aww..that's so sad, well i guess i can start again with the new one
sad.gif

-dez
 
when i feed them the meal worms, do i put them in the water? do i kill them first? cut them up?? etc..what's the exact process...
still very niave..
-dez
 
Hi Desiree,

Sorry for your lost... There's a great number of newts sold at pet stores that just don't make it. They're stressed for months and just don´t adapt to captivity. Also, the bite and contact with the frog didn't help that much to reduce stress... probably even gave him some infection just to worsen the picture...
sick.gif


Anyway, although meal worms isn't the best food for newts (too fatty, low on calcium, high on phosphorus, low on vitamins and usually difficult to digest because of chitin skin) you should observe the following:

1-only give recently molted meal worms (their skin is whiter);
2-you should crush their heads (their mouth parts can injure the newt's digestive system);
3-you should spray the mealworms with mutivitamins/calcium or gut-load them (by giving them some nutricious food stuff a few days) before offering them to your newt.

The most pratical food items would be frozen fish food. You can order it from a number of sites.

Good Luck!

Filipe
 
THANKS! oh and is it normal that my new guy just sits there paralyzed and stares at me??:S
lol
-dez
 
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