Oriental fire bellied toads

[callum]

<font color="119911"><font face="arial,helvetica"> i keep my two oriental fire bellied toads in a 12 gallon aquarium with a floating piece of cork and the water depth about 5inches. There is a turtle filter and lots of rocks, live water plants and a few plastic plants. Before that i made my own divider out of perspects and silaconed it in. I used the smaller side for the land which consisted of bark chip subsrate, a coco-nut hide and live plants. The water side consisted of a filter, rocks and underwater plastic plants. This woeked very well but i decided to change because i wanted to go for something a bit differant. Also thinking of adding 2 fire bellied newts in with the toads is that ok?</font></font>

 

[benjamin]

i wouldn't add newts as they may get limbs bitten off or even eaten or stressed to death by the toads.

 

[dylan]

There are actually mixed opinions on this. It mainly depends on the "aggression" of your toads and newts. If they are calm, it'll work out!

 

[chris]

Don't mix the animals. As well as problems with toads attacking newts (they will likely view them as potential prey), there are other issues involoving toxins - the newts could poison the toads or vice versa. There are also problems with pathogens crossing between the species.

If you want to keep newts, keep them in a separate tank. There is no reason to risk the health of any animals simply for the sake of not setting up separate tanks.

take a look at www.caudata.org/cc/articles/Mixing_disasters.shtml

Chris

 

[abrahm]

I would leave the newts out for many reasons. Bombina are usually aggressive feeders and they may accidentally get a bite of newt or try to eat the newt which could could result in the toad's poisoning.

Also, with four animals in one small tank you are going to have a lot of waste being produced. This would necessitate a rather intensive scheme of substrate cleaning and water changes.

It will be much less stressful for all the animals involved, especially the newts, if you do not house them together. The rather peaceful Chinese firebelly newts will be stressed by the constant presence of the toads and not having a place to escape to.