Water phobic CFBs?

[sarah]

Bonjour,

First, the history:
My boyfriend just recently bought 3 newts from PetSmart (a horrible place to buy newts, I know, but when the newts look so depressed, sometimes it's hard to say "Well, I shouldn't buy from these people."). They're fairly juvenile CFBs, a little too thin, and they've come to live in my tank for a while because mine is bigger and has more newt stuff to play with (I've just got CFBs in this tank as well). His newts have already gone through a quarantine period, as well.

Now, the question:
Has anyone ever had CFBs that act as though they're afraid of the water? These little guys panic at the slightest touch of the stuff. I've been trying to coax them to hang out in some of the shallow areas I have set up, but they aren't having any of it! I'm rather worried, as they also staunchly refuse to eat. Can anyone give me some suggestions on resolving this newt-identity crisis? I'm beginning to think they must have been raised as lizards!

 

[nate]

Hi Sarah, yes it's quite common to get water-phobic cfbs from the pet shop. It's a behavior that seems to be hard-wired in them like Triturus newts...once they have been out for a while, it can be tough to get them back in. It's like they think they are now in a terrestrial stage for a while, and have no intentions of returning until the next breeding season. This can make it very difficult for them to become conditioned and start feeding well, as you're finding out.

I personally prefer to make them enter the hard way, raising the water level so that they cannot exit the water completely. I leave some rocks close enough to the surface to where they can rest on them with part of their body out of water, but not enough to where they can avoid being constantly wet. This seems to trigger the reverse behavior within a few days to a week and they begin to feed naturally under water again.

Note, they will swim frantically and this makes some people sqeamish...thinking they might drown and such. Trust me, they will not, I've done this many many times. Good luck with them.

 

[amazon]

you can buy hormones that will have it morph, the stress way is cruel and could kill newts that aren't very strong at heart, please consider hormone therapy.

 

[sarah]

Amazon:


Er, I think you may have the wrong post. They're firebellied Newts, as far as I know they don't do any morphing?

At any rate, thank you to Nate for the suggestion. I've got them swimming, and they FINALLY started eating (Thank ). Once they realised most of the food was at the bottom, I had swimming newts.

-Sarah

 

[amazon]

oh, sorry. lol, i didnt know they didn't morph.

 

[rob]

LOL Ok....I'm going to try explaining what morphing is.

Newts and salamanders are born as eggs. Most start life as a tadpole-like create we refer to as larvae. The ones that do not start off as minature adults.

Ok, so now we have these larvae that have big frilly gills on the outside of their body. They live like this for a period of time (depending on the species, temperature and food available) and then some of them morph into adults by losing their gills (just like frogs and toads do). The ones that don't still grow their legs, they just don't lose there gills. There are some that actually grow internal gills and lose their external gills when they morph, but they still require fully aquatic existances.

Axolotl's are a great example of a non-morphing salamander (they typically don't morph unless forced to). Hellbenders are a good example of a morphing, yet still staying with gills (internal) salamander). There are a few that skip the larvael stage. But almost any newt or salamander you have will probably go through life as this: egg, aquatic gilled larvae, terrestrial juvienlle, and then lastly depending on it's species back to an aquatic adult (no gills, but just living in the water) or staying a terrestrial adult.

Hope I didn't get too indepth. Good examples of the type that stay as terrestrial adults are tigers, and good examples of the aquatic non-gilled adults are chinese firebellies.

Hope it helps,
Rob