Raising (& Breeding) Ommatotriton

Mark said:
They clearly do well outdoors with minimal interference. The poor results some people reported indoors makes me wonder what the critical factors are. Perhaps some populations in more arid parts of it's range are less tolerant of certain conditions. I think Billy keeps the parents of these aquatic all year outdoors: http://www.caudata.org/forum/f1173-...on-euproctus/66773-ommatotriton-like-wet.html

As the most neglected of all my animals they are some of the fattest. Now that's a belly...

mark-albums-photos-picture17249-img-6590.jpg
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You call that fat!? Must have never seen Taricha species.......
 
They're two years old now and about 13 cm, temperatures are between 4 and 10 degrees Celsius. The males' crest doesn't grow as much as I had hoped. He's sometimes not able to sink down to the bottom of the tank. The female does really well in water and is very plump.
 
It was a joke Ian. I was just trying to be funny. I thought people could tell that, guess not, my bad...
 
sde said:
It was a joke Ian. I was just trying to be funny. I thought people could tell that, guess not, my bad...
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On so many levels that was just not 'funny' and added nothing to the thread. This is not a forum for jokes or to poke fun. This is a forum for education and learning.
 
Well, last year I had lots of unfertilised eggs. The male wouldn't sink so I put him back on land to prevent any health issues. This is something the breeder I got them from mentioned me when buying the newts, his male ophryticus would neither sink to the bottom of the tank at temperatures higher than 5°C. Past winter was the most warm one for decades with average temperatures of 6-7 °C.

Something I noticed was that the adults ate a lot better when kept outside, and ate best at temperatures from 10-15°C. In summer they hardly ate anything. Mine went to another newt keeper past summer.
 
jAfFa CaKe said:
Time to revive this thread, how are they getting on?
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My group is still going strong. They breed whether they are kept indoors with little temperature cycling or outdoors in a typical UK winter. I keep them terrestrial until I want them to breed and within days of being given access to water courtship begins. Last year I gave a lot of eggs away and the remainder were thrown into a tub in the garden and raised themselves. I have a couple of generations of offspring. My breedings have produced far more males than females. The big downside of this species is the male aggression during the aquatic phase. This means you have to limit the group size, split them up or simply keep some of the males terrestrial.
 
Interesting. When you say access to water, what do you mean? Do you plan on breeding them anytime soon?
 
My strategy with most biphasic newts is to keep them terrestrial without access to water, other than a small water dish, until I want them to breed. When the time is right I place the newts in an aquatic setup with a floating or fixed island. I generally try to coincide this change with daphnia blooms to reduce the financial cost of feeding many tiny mouths. In my experience the breeding response is greater after a prolonged terrestrial phase.

I might give them access to water in the next few weeks. If you want some juveniles from last year drop me a PM.
 
Hi Mark,

I was thinking of getting some Bandeds again. Will they over-winter ok in an outdoor enclosure in the UK ?

Regards
Damian
 
As long as they have protection from freezing they should be ok. A lot depends on the severity of the winter. Last year we had a very mild winter in my neck of the woods, rarely dipping below freezing. Protecting from a light frost is very different from a prolonged spell at -10C. No newt will survive freezing so you need factor that into the enclosure design by providing underground hides (below frost line) with plenty of deep organic matter such as leaf litter.
 
Wow, those juveniles look really healthy, and their enclosure is very realistic. When looking at the zoomed in pics its barely distinguishable that your photographing a man-made setup. I like the idea of basically keeping them wild, you probably get to observe a lot more natural behavior from them. Great job.
 
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