The Caudata Confessions thread

My confession: Over a period of 8 years, I have found 3 dessicated baby newts in my basement and have absolutely no clue when or how they managed to escape from my Alcatraz tanks.

My secret phobia: every time I step on anything (a bit of dirt, sand, anything) on my basement floor, I'm afraid that I've stepped on an escaped newt (although this has never happened to me).
 
I have a similar problem but based on having 3 tortoises. We let them go out for walkies around the house and they tend to get under our feet a lot. The other day I jumped up when I touched something with my foot under a chair...it was a shoe. But it wasn't our house...
 
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My confession: I have promised my girlfriend no more tanks until I graduate... but I find myself still looking at axolotls longingly and wondering if she'd notice.
 
confessions?

hmmm

related:
I never cycled my first axolotl tank. I just pulled the old goldfish trick of plonking in a filter and doing a water change every month or so. oops.

unrelated:
I sort of think the walrus guy from mythbusters is hot.
 
confessions?

hmmm

related:
I never cycled my first axolotl tank. I just pulled the old goldfish trick of plonking in a filter and doing a water change every month or so. oops.

unrelated:
I sort of think the walrus guy from mythbusters is hot.

Walrus guy X) Jamie Hyneman ftw!

Erm..confessions o_O :

I once went on a rare OCD rampage and scrubbed my tank and filter clean and crashed my cycle :c

I favor Aristotle the Axolotl a bit more then Albi. Shh, don't tell Albi!
 
Whilst out with my 8 year old daughter we called into a pet shop and they had 6 red spot newts. I was under orders from "she who must be obeyed" that I was to have no more newts. I convinced my daughter she wanted 2 of these newts ( with a sweetie bribe) I got two and went to the car, told my daughter to hold them while I quickly nipped back and got some food for them. I bought the other 4 and hid them in a bag with some other bits and peices.
On getting home my daughter was pleased as punch with her new pets and my wife could not really say anything, as I tried to explain that I had tried to put my daughter off buying them, but it was her pocket money.
We set up a rather large tank for 2 newts and after about an hour when the novelty had wore off for my daughter I sneaked out to the car, got the other 4 and slipped them in the tank.
That was 3 months ago and my wife and daughter are none the wiser, if ever challenged I shall explain it as they must have had babies.

Dave
 
I love stories about sneaking animals in the house xD
When i was 13 or so i caught a Natrix maura and kept it in the balcony in open sight for 6 months. I ended up presenting it to my parents in the kitchen because i couldn´t take it anymore. My father used to read the newspaper in front of the damn thing and he never saw it :D
I also sneaked 4 jerbils once and managed to conceal them for three weeks.
My parents are VERY patient people...
 
I have spent a lot of time trying to decide on a greenhouse, my husband expressed some concern that I was going to fill it with something more than seedlings and plants. ... I laughed, what a ridiculous idea :wacko:. Well I thought about it more and then discovered a lovely potting shed, this arrives Wednesday and I am already plotting on some four legged inhabitants to live in there too. Now if my husband hadn't expressed his concern, I would never have thought of putting anything else in there other than plants:D
 
Every time I go into the basement where I keep my tanks, I have to do a head count. I stare into every tank until I have found each inhabitant. It doesn't matter if I am late for work or I just got home from hanging out with friends and its 3 in the morning and I can barely keep my eyes open- head count every time.
This is fairly new, though (within the past ~2.5 years) and I think it stems from a horrible day when both my pachy's escaped and neither one was found alive. That day is kinda why I was off the forum so long...I still have horrible guilt...
 
My confessions are:

1: I wish I had gotten Pirate when he was a larvae
2: I like terrestrial more than aquatic (More maintenance :p)
3: I like dull colored animals much more than bold colored ones (Love Gray, Black, Brown, you get the idea)
4: An extension of number 3 is, I don't like albino and other white morphs simply because they remind me too much of inbreeding and mad science, only like Leucistic and Copper axolotls, and once considered looking for an albino Ceratophrys cranwelli x cornuta for the purposes of referencing Jurassic World, and naming it Indominus

And yes, I know this is an ancient thread, but I want to see everyone else's confessions ;):rofl:
 
My confessions are:

1: I wish I had gotten Pirate when he was a larvae
2: I like terrestrial more than aquatic (More maintenance :p)
3: I like dull colored animals much more than bold colored ones (Love Gray, Black, Brown, you get the idea)
4: An extension of number 3 is, I don't like albino and other white morphs simply because they remind me too much of inbreeding and mad science, only like Leucistic and Copper axolotls, and once considered looking for an albino Ceratophrys cranwelli x cornuta for the purposes of referencing Jurassic World, and naming it Indominus

And yes, I know this is an ancient thread, but I want to see everyone else's confessions ;):rofl:

Also, I knew I forgot something!

5: Most of my pets are surprisingly WC. I like really uncommon species (Cope's gray, Fowler's toad, Cricket frogs, Chorus frogs, etc.) so I have to catch them, now I place adds, and look here and on other sites, but typically for those species, I either collect egg masses, or Juveniles.

6: I got most of my pets in secret. My mom does not like herps, thinks they all look like snakes, and their food and waste smell to her (Won this round, nose-blind to it :p;)) so me and my dad would either find something I liked while herping, (Mostly juvenile toads and such, picked ones with lots of brown and black spots) and we would sneak it home, Or we would see an animal at the pet-store that was being improperly cared for. And my mom would eventually see it a month to at the most 1 year after we get it set-up. Her latest discovery was Pirate actually, (As you can tell an extremely long time ago ;)) and she described it as and I quote, "What's that fat thing you have?" I remember it, because I laughed my butt of when she said that. She still has yet to discover my Notos, my Taricha, and my group of Anolis carolinensis ;):p
 
I still feel badly for the worms i feed to my newts, especially if I have to chop them up.

I used to keep crickets to feed toads i previously had, but to this day they give me the creeps so no more cricket-keeping!

My tank took forever to cycle and I couldn't figure out why until my husband noted i was using way too much dechlorinator for my buckets of water. When i reduced the amount my tank finished cycling three days later... I still don't feel like i use enough, and adding water to the tank always makes me nervous.

My newts don't have real names, just 'raft newt' and 'wound newt'. My previous newt was 'big newt'. Not so creative...

When 'raft newt' was stubbornly staying on his raft, I would sometimes feed him thawed bloodworms, and i always wondered if they were too cold and if he would get an 'ice cream headache'...
 
Cant be bothered about confessing too much as vol. 1 " confessions of an addict" would run to several hundred pages but my latest confession is that i have temporarily misplaced a 5" salmon pink bird eating spider. Patrick is probably still in my dart frog room eating free range roaches( another confession lol), temp and humidity are ideal so he could be free range indefinitly ( this could possibly explain the mysterious jump in my electric bill but probably not......) , i havent bothered informing my arachnaphobic wife yet as she can be a touch unreasonable sometimes and if she pays too close attention too the contents of the frog room she may spot the three other species of tarantula and the snake i promised not to get (couple more incidental confessions). The way she goes on you would think i was planning a snake and tarantula breeding program, she is a very suspicious and untrusting wifey and she says some very hurtfull things to me. Either way if she spots Patrick wandering about somebody is going to get hurt, probably me as she wouldnt go near a big *** spider, so im probably going to frame my no.2 son who copes much better with premenstrual women than i do plus i can get him some geckos i promised wifey he wasnt going to have as an apology.
 
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  • SkudulfXD:
    Hello!!! I'm new to this website and idk how to ask a proper question on the designated spot yet, so I'll ask here, I'm a first time Axolotl owner, and my dad used to run an aquarium store, anyways... Orca, my Axolotl, seems to loose parts of her toes on one limb from time to time, I can't seem to find the problem. Tempature is well, she doesn't seem to have any infections or anything, though. And I'm not sure if I'll be able to find a vet in Brazil for amphibians that are in a reasonable distance to drive without stressing Orca out too much
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  • Toast69:
    Hello, I’m hoping for some advice please. Our Axolotl is about 7 months old. Till now no problem. Eating, growing and happy. He’s simply stopped eating. Everything looks fine, his gills look healthy and no apparent signs of sickness. He just swims past the pellets and bloodworm like he can’t smell it. I don’t think it’s a blockage either. Any ideas and suggestions for treatment would be much appreciated. Thank you!
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  • Olivia:):
    what is the best thermometer for my axolotl tank? preferably on Amazon, and can you show me a picture or a link:) thank you!
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  • Olivia:):
    Also should I have a fan hitting my axolotl tank 24/7?
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  • thenewtster:
    does anyone know how to care for mud salamanders:)thanks.
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  • thenewtster:
    hello
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  • thenewtster:
    how long do mud salamanders live
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  • thenewtster:
    im new to the salamaner comunity
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  • thenewtster:
    hey guys, again im resarching mud salamander babys and there care:)
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  • Katia Del Rio-Tsonis:
    Dear All, I would appreciate some help identifying P. waltl disease and treatment. We received newts from Europe early November and a few maybe 3/70 had what it looked like lesions under the legs- at that time we thought maybe it was the stress of travel- now we think they probably had "red leg syndrome" (see picture). However a few weeks later other newts started to develop skin lesions (picture enclosed). The sender recommended to use sulfamerazine and we have treated them 2x and we are not sure they are all recovering. Does anyone have any experience with P. waltl diseases and could give some input on this? Any input would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.
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  • Katia Del Rio-Tsonis:
    sorry I am having a hard time trying to upload the pictures- I have them saved on my hard drive... any suggestions-the prompts here are not allowing for downloads that way as far as I can tell. Thanks
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    Katia Del Rio-Tsonis: sorry I am having a hard time trying to upload the pictures- I have them saved on my hard... +1
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