Taricha newt

[Lamarca]

(Originally a pm message) Hello sorry I don’t know you but I saw your username on a thread and you seemed knowledgeable about taricha so here’s my question. I keep a pair of adults in a 30 gallon with less than a third of the tank as the land portion. I’ve kept them in there since November, so for 5 months now, and they have stayed in their terrestrial form on land the entire time. So my question is what makes them change? If I took out the entire land portion and hides and stuff would they be forced to change in only water? I’ve tried luring them into the water with worms but they get out of the water every time. If they don’t change soon I want to move them to a drier vivarium. Also, they both have small black spots all over their bodies, I have seen pictures and video of others having the same thing. I think it might just be part of their skin but at first I freaked out and thought they had chytrid until I heard that the Salamander Chytrid disease Bsal has never been found in North America. I’m still curious though if anyone knows anything about it so I’m going to attach a photo of my male and a random pic I found on a google search. Thanks and please help shed some light if you can! (It only let me attach my own photo and not the screenshot of other individual for some reason)
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[Chinadog]

Hopefully someone with experience keeping Taricha will post about your other issues, but his skin looks fine to me, here's a link to a thread discussing the brown spots they sometimes have.

https://www.caudata.org/forum/showthread.php?t=96171

 

[Otterwoman]

These are definitely granulosa? Anyway spots are normal and sometimes indicative of an impending shed.

 

[Roughskinned]

Hey I just saw this - hopefully you found your information before this, but Im fairly certain that the newt in the picture is a California newt, Taricha Torosa. Especially since torosa are much more terrestrial than aquatic. Before their breeding set up, I had mine in a 3/4 land 1/4 water vivarium

 

[DerSerious]

Good afternoon, I am sorry that I am trying to communicate with you like two years after you posted however unless the little guy is symptomatic, like bloated or too skinny, or has trouble eating or defecating they should be fine. By the way, you mentioned you were keeping two. There isn't any chance that they have bred or you could point me to a breeder? My secondary E-mail is literally taricharivularis@gmail. So yeah I am obsessed with trying to find at least one newt from the Taricha family, whether T. torosa, T. rivularis, T. granulosa, or T. serriea. keep him or her for a while and really get to know his/her habits and favorite foods, and eventually pair and breed them since the wildfires have destroyed so much habitat of theirs. I first started keeping Paddletail Newts and found them so majestic I fell deeply in love with Salamanders and Newts. Anyway, even if you could point me in the direction of a trail to a person who could help me I'd appreciate it more than you know.
Hoping against hope,
-Matt