Question: Northwestern Salamander newts

[yadlim]

So here is a long story short. In late April I rescued a batch of Northwestern Salamander eggs from the ocean. As they are a fresh water species, they would not have survived otherwise.
Two weeks later 42 successfully hatched. I went that day and bought a 10 gallon fish tank and set it up as follows:
· Fish gravel bottom
· Amphibian rock for them to climb out of the water on
· Hiding rock with plastic fronze for hiding
· Three small plastic plants to hide in
For food I was suggested to feed them “First Bites” as per the reptile minimum wage guy at the pet shop. He said after three days to start feeding bloodworms, which I did.
Everything went well for several weeks. I added a bubbler to keep the water oxygenated. Then I screwed up and let the tank go too long without changing any of the water. Slime covered all the rocks. I took action when I saw that one of the babies had died.
At that point I got two gallons of spring water from the grocery store and set about carefully catching my babies. They are about 2cm long with tiny thin front legs that are about as think as a horse hair. What I found was devastating…. 9 dead. Two died having been trapped in the rocks. The other 7 were covered in a white slime.
The remaining 31 babies waited in a jar while I rinsed out the tank, wiped off most of the slime off the rocks, and removed all the gravel. One of the babies just lay flat on his side when I put them back into the tank. He was dead within the hour. One other did not look great – he was dead within six hours.
This was three days ago. I added Freeze Dried Daphnia rather than the bloodworms as it seemed more size appropriate. I am still feeding the “First Bites”. Four of the newts will swim to the surface to feed, the rest just hang out on the bottom.
This morning I found four more dead newts.
I am using a fish net to scrap the floor of the tank for uneaten food and other debris two or three times a day. Tomorrow I will change out 20% of the water – which is what I understood from the reading. That I need to be doing lots of water changes for the babies. I feed small amounts three or four times a day of both the “first bites” powder and the freeze dried Daphinia. I am using a fish net to remove any accumulation off the bottom of the tank at least twice a day.
Any help would be appreciated. I am at a loss of anything I should be doing better.
Yadlim

 

[Otterwoman]

I would try live food- blackworms.

 

[yadlim]

Where do I find them? I have ZERO salamander experience. The pet shop sells brine shrimp eggs and sets up to raise them. Would that help?

 

[Vicious]

I do 100% water changes with mine. I have no clue as to what kind they were but I was going off of info based on what little info I could find on any salamander/newt out there. And this was before I found this site and I already have 9 or who have gone through metamorphosis successfully.

I did 100% water changes with no more than 4 or 5 larvae per a cool whip container; water no deeper than inch, usually less. I at first used distilled water (which I later learned I shouldn't) adding bacteria supplement and betta bowl water conditioner (I have three bettas too) and using that to change their water. Not long after, to save money I just bought spring water from walmart.

I feed a main stay diet of Black worms and occasionally get pond water for water fleas. I use only one or two rocks with a bare bottom to each container for easy cleaning.

I also scrub each bowl daily with an algae scrubber and warm water.

Hope this may help. Then again it could be different depending on species. Mine are unknown salamanders which hopefully someone can help with in another thread.



Saw your Brine shrimp: Yes I used brine shrimp babies on my hatched babies. They loved them. You can by a mesh net to rinse them off with.

 

[Otterwoman]

Call around to local pet shops and find out if they have blackworms (live blackworms). More likely that a 'mom-n-pop' store would.
Or else, you can try mincing a night crawler.