Photo: Worms, and a general rant from a stressed out juvenile FBN owner

[stitchpunk]

I should be happy really, 4 out of my 6 Japanese FBN larva have metamorphosed. But we're having somewhat of a food emergency at our place for both my newts and EbonyKrow's.

We have 2 wingless fruit fly cultures that seem to be doing ok so far. But I'm damned if I can tell whether or not the newts are eating them. The stupid insects seem to be good mainly for A) hanging out at the top of the tank where the newts can't reach them (as my guys have shown no inclination to climb the tank walls); B) escaping and C) falling into the (shallow) water and drowning. Yesterday I watched one crawl onto a newt's nose and walk all the way down his back while the newt showed no interest at all! I put a piece of over-ripe fruit in the tank to encourage the flies to hang around at ground level, but with limited success.

And that is all we have to feed 12 juvenile newts with! Our white worms have died, and I went to order some more from the only place in NZ that sells them, only to be told that they'll have no worms of any kind until April!!!

I can hear you all shouting "EARTHWORMS!" at your computers. But. We haven't had any real rain in weeks, bordering on drought conditions here, so I couldn't find a single worm when I went digging around in our back yard. I also can't find anyone selling them! Not bait shops, not worm farm places - all anyone has is tiger worms aka compost worms, which I'm assuming are the same as what you call red wrigglers in the US - the ones that smell bad if you cut them up. Does that sound right?

We have 3 live food suppliers in the whole country. 1 of them only does crickets, and I am thinking about ordering some pinheads, but considering that both tanks have shallow water in them won't they just drown as well? Supplier #2 is the one with no worms. Supplier #3 has small maggots on offer and I'm waiting for them to email me back. Because, you see, NONE of these places has anything as helpful as a shopping cart and PayPal - oh no, you have to email them and hope that they bother to reply to you with a price and payment details. (RANT RANT WHINGE MOAN). And even if I can get some maggots eventually i guess I'll have to order them every week because they only keep for a couple of days.

Hence, I am STRESSED. And sick of the bloody sunshine that everyone thinks is so great.

More sensibly, I can't figure out the worm thing. I've read that our earthworms don't survive in compost. And yet I know caudate owners do culture worms. So are you culturing earthworms somehow? Or are you keeping tiger worms and serving them up whole?

I'm freaking out that my juvies are just going to starve to death if I can't get something for them that's easier to catch than the fruit flies. So suggestions welcome! (bearing in mind that I live in an inner city suburb, so telling me to go to a forest or something doesn't really help.)

Thank you. Rant over now. I shall compensate you by adding some photos!

 

[Lusiwarrior]

Well currently the most immediate solution to see that your case is instead of giving a pass to fly larvae, they are also nutritious and have the advantage of not being as agile as the flies themselves. Then perhaps it is best to try to order something from overseas, perhaps nearest country!
I have helped!

 

[tmarmoratus]

There isn't a local fish store (LFS) in your area that carries live tubifex worms and/or blackworms? In my experience rearing morphs, I've had great success with their acceptance of these worms.

I see there is a Wonderworld Aquarium that serves "North Shore, Manukau, Albany, Takapuna, Ponsonby, Papakura, Howick, Warkworth Auckland". The phone number is 07-348 0328. Not sure how far you are from them, or If you haven't already contacted them, but if you haven't, give them a try to see if they carry either of those types of worms, and if not, if they know of anyone who does.

If you get really desperate, you can try defrosting a cube of frozen blood worms, then grabbing a blood worm with a pair of tweezers and wave it slowly in front of the newt's face.

Another alternative is to try to reintroduce the morphs to an all-aquatic environment to see if they'll take to water (keep it shallow, maybe 1-inch, and keep a close eye on them, as morphs are much more susceptible to drowning than adults). If they take to water, feeding them becomes very simple.

Good luck!

 

[Mark]

Jeff makes some good suggestions. The JFBN I've raised have all been 100% terrestrial and I've employed a number of feeding methods over the years.

If your FF supply is reasonably stable you can try placing the morphs in very small plastic tubs i.e. 10cm square, 5cm deep, with a damp paper towel folded up in the bottom and a small hide. The main problem with flies is, as you've discovered, they climb. In a very small space the newts stand a much better chance of getting to them.

Mine eat frozen bloodworm from the end of a toothpick. It takes a little while for them to get the hang of it, but once they do they'll never go hungry.

I also use maggots. A good angling shop will often sell small, soft varieties which are manageable by morphs. Alternatively FF larvae are just as good.

Something else to consider is a compost bin. It won't help you immediately but over time a good compost bin will become home to thousands of accessible micro inverts; white worms, baby earthworms, spring-tails, gnat larvae, mites, maggots etc. I stick slices of stale bread across the surface of my worm bins and you should see the number of white worms and spring-tails it produces, even in the winter.

 

[Lusiwarrior]

See? There is nothing that will not solve! The idea of tmarmoratus you try to move entirely aquatic is very good! Now if you follow the suggestion of Mark and you were looking for worms in sections of fishing is trying to get something like what is in the pic, because my youth accept them very well, terrestrial or aquatic seam. Here in Portugal these worms are known to asticot and exist in any fishing house. They are the larvae of the bluebottle Calliphora vomitoria, however you must be careful because they are very rich in fat!
I have helped!

 

[Azhael]

I would personally recommend hand-feeding. Since you have a few animals, it wouldn´t consume a lot of time and once they get used to eat, they´ll eat pretty much anything as long as it dangles from the tweezers. It makes life much more easier, at least for me xD

 

[stitchpunk]

Thanks for all the advice folks, I do appreciate it! Sad to say, blackworms are not sold in New Zealand and I've never seen tubifex either. My LFS only has mealworms and large crickets. They have a terrestrial CFBN there, Lord knows what they feed the poor thing on.

Tmarmoratus, thanks for the Wonderworld suggestion and taking the trouble! I took a look at their website, they have microworms interestingly, but otherwise its the standard mealworms/locusts/crickets.

I'm still waiting to hear from the maggot-selling people. Grrrr. We are following up a lead for whiteworms and I will try the local fishkeepers' forum as well. I do have frozen bloodworm...I optimistically tried putting a cube of it in the tank, but only the fruit flies were keen on it! So if all else fails I will see if I can find all my juvies and put them into a small container for hand-feeding the bloodworm. Normally I would expect to be able to buy white worms or earthworms on TradeMe (our local version of Ebay), but it seems the long hot dry spell is causing problems for everyone when it comes to worms.

I still have 1 or 2 larva in the water...one of them is huge and has massive gills on 1 side and none on the other which makes him look quite peculiar! When/if they morph I will drop the water level to a minimum, but the pattern with all the others has been that once they lose the gills completely they don't go in the water at all. Which is unfortunate because I do (now) have plenty of daphnia and mosquito larva!

I'm probably panicking prematurely, 2 of them have been on land for less than a week so probably aren't eating yet, and i THINK i may have spotted some newt poop this morning, so hopefully the older 2 have caught a few flies. The fruit flies are hanging around the piece of fruit I put in there, so now they should be easier to catch. I'm sure we'll manage! its just frustrating when you are dependent on live food suppliers and they run out or don't reply to you. And we can't import insects - they'd just get confiscated at the border and we'd probably get fined.

oh well, by the time we've raised this lot we'll be able to write a book about newt keeping in NZ and sell it online and get rich! (yeah right). Thanks for listening to my rant and being so helpful - you guys are the best!

 

[dutch guy]

what you can do is: take adult cricket's put them in a plastic box with eggboxe's and place a plastic box with some plantsoil in it cover it with a piece of moscito net then in a day or 5 you have young crickets keep the box fermly closed because the youngster are as small as dust, i hope this can help you

 

[evut]

Hi, if your newts accept defrosted bloodworms when you hand feed them then you could try placing some on a little dish (jar lid) lined with a piece of tissue. Mine were happy to feed themselves like this. I found that the best tool for hand feeding bloodworms was a small bamboo bbq stick.

If you get a lot of crickets you can keep them alive for a long time if you look after them (food, water, cleaning...) but they will grow. We had some medium/large sized ones which we halved (sorry, it's gross...) and the newts took them from a dish.

Regarding earth worms - if your hunting is successful and you find more worms than you need put some soil into a live food container (or something with breathing holes that the worms won't get through) and keep the worms in there. I keep a box like this at room temperature and the worms live in it. I give them a small piece of banana skin or apple core to eat.

Good luck!

 

[dutch guy]

we, have worms stored also by room temperature and we give them vegetable left overs unboiled i put the leftovers in a blender and we mix it true the soil, we can buy them by a kilo in a box at this way they stay well for more then a month, they even give eggs, so we have real small worms as well for our juvi's, the best size for breathing holes do i make with a dart arrow.
Diggin for worm is a bit hard here there's a lot of clay, so buying was the best choice and we have always fresh worms at stock

 

[stitchpunk]

I tried bloodworms on a toothpick yesterday but they turned their noses up at them. I'll keep trying though! I've heard back from the maggot people finally so that's something. Now I'm worried again though because i saw a couple of white spots on one of the newts yesterday. If they're still there today then I'll quarantine him and pray it isn't a fungus. They are no doubt stressed by this hot weather... the fan that I had in their room broke and all the stores I've been able to get to so far are sold out of fans. We really need some rain!

I'm going to try and track down someone with a nice healthy compost heap and see if I can get some worms that way.

 

[Joost]

Try to give some bloodworms or tubifex on a tissue or toilet paper. This works fine for me. Make sure your tank is small, so your newts are close to the food. When newts see others eating, they will to.