is there anything wrong with newt?

[fire bellied duck]

hi all! i have 5 chinese firebellied newts but 1 of the smaller ones (he is tiny!) will never go in the water and he is getting really skiny.Pepole have told me to sepprate him 2 a diffrent tank.Are they right?and if they are should it be terrestial or aqautic


chris



p.s if its relevent i feed them frozen blood worms mosquito larvae and daphnia but the supposedly sick 1 never goes into the water to get it

[froggsong]

IMO, you should separate him, he isn't feeding, and it may be because he is so much smaller than the others. The new setup should be semi-aquatic. Part land, part water. For now, since you don't know what is going on exactly, you can either go with a sort of FB setup like I use for my newt which allows nearly the entire tank to be land AND water, OR you should do more land than water, but still enough water for it to swim around if it goes in the water. You can feed the stuff you are currently feeding, both in a dish on the land, and in the water to see if you can get him to eat in the water. IMO, you should probably offer him something that will fatten him up a bit right now. If he isn't too small, maybe offer some small wax worms, they are very rich (and tasty to them) and full of fat and whatnot, so it should get it healthier faster. My newt got quite fat when I could get her to eat nothing but wax worms. Now she finally eats other stuff again and isn't overweight. You can also offer chopped red wigglers or nightcrawlers (more nutritious than the wigglers). If you can find them, white worms are supposed to be good feeders for newts and salamanders, and you can put them in a dish on the land, and in the water. Offer food constantly and change at least daily, in both the water and in a dish on land. If it does not eat in the water, make sure you clean the excess food from the water (the white shrimp nets work best for this). Another food you can offer your newts is brine shrimp (sea monkeys). You can buy the kits easily at the pet store, and then you breed them and either put them in the cage with an eye dropper, or use the shrimp net. You should also be able to put them in a dish on the land. Anything that you put in a dish on land that would normally go in the water should be in a small amount if water in the dish as well, btw.

Do you have any pics of the little guy so we could possibly help you better? A pic comparing him to the larger ones would be very helpful in determining if size is the real issue.

If it is NOT a size issue, it is especially important to isolate the newt in case it is sick. You do not want the poor little guy to make the others sick.

So, pretty much either way, you need to separate him from the others. If you are totally unable to do that right now, when you feed the others, make sure they are all in the water and then put a dish of food on the land for the little one. You at least need to offer him food where he is, if he wont go in the water. Separating him is the best choice though. Then he can be comfortable and choose where he wants to live/eat.

Hope that helps!

Edit: I can post pics of my newt setup if you would like to see what it looks like.

[fire bellied duck]

errrrr im not very good with computers how do u post pictures?





chris


p.s could i see your habitat thanks

[froggsong]

The easiest way in my opinion is to set up a photobucket account, upload your photos to photobucket (it's easy, you do it right from the page it takes you to when you log in), and post the IMG link. That is the link that you use to post pics to the forum. Photobucket gives you a set of links for each picture so you can post the pictures in different ways. The code you want will be the bottom one and will say IMG Code. All you have to do is click and it will copy it, then you go to the text box where you post to a thread and right click and hit "paste".

I don't have any pics right this second, but I will take some in a little while and post them for you. It isn't the prettiest, but it is very functional and my newt loves it.

[fire bellied duck]

hi froggsong or anyone else !!! ty for the help with pictures sorry there not that good









heres one (dont worry this is my worst one)





these are 2 of my newts together






this is my rough habitat i havn't put the newt in yet tell me if this is OK

[froggsong]

What is that you are using for substrate?

It looks ok for now, if you notice he is in the water all the time, you need to either add a larger water dish or set up a paludarium.

That poor baby is very thin... he needs to eat soon or he might not make it... I suggest you check out this site and get some advice from the keepers there: Caudata.org Newt and Salamander Forum

I took pictures of my paludarium, but I can't get my stupid computer to read the SD card again... I will get them posted as soon as I can.

On a side note, I wonder why he has five back toes on each foot but the other newt only has four?

[fire bellied duck]

The weird thing is that the small one has 6 toes on one foot!and im using moss that i found outside in my garden






chris

p.s know the site (my name on that is superfin)

[froggsong]

Sorry it took me so long, but here are the pics of my newt's paludarium (I'm going to redo it soon, but it will still be similar):

First, this is Saphira (Taricha granulosa):


This is Max, my trumpet snail, they don't reproduce as much as other snails, and they only eat algae and tank waste (that means no snacking on your plants):


This is a close up of the area that has no land over it, you can see some of the guppies in the shot. I have a bunch of them in there, I breed them (feeders, but I keep the males, they are pretty), and she eats them. At least she must be, they disappear from time to time and she hasn't eaten anything I've tried to feed her in a couple of months, but she is still healthy and chubby... If you try to feed fish to your newts, make sure they are small (fry size I'd say, and not much bigger) and that they are not fresh from the pet store:


Here's a shot of the entire tank (Wow, I can't believe I haven't taken that sticker off yet, lol...) It is better not to use gravel, but if you have to (I couldn't figure out how to use a regular substrate with it set up as a FB, and I hadn't found this site yet), make sure that the gravel is not large enough to be ingested. I don't know if you can tell in the picture, but my filter (Whisper 10i) pours out level with the land and then flows through back into the bottom. I have some good algae growth on the rock up there, especially where the filter pours out, which helps with the water quality. :


I've found that this is a really good set up, at least for my newt (T. granulosa). Some newts are more terrestrial, some are more aquatic, and with some it depends on the stage they are in in their life, or their sex. I like to have it set up this way though, because the newt can choose to be in the water or on the land, without having to sacrifice much land surface in order to offer as much water as you would like. My tank is a ten gallon, but has the same land/water area as a larger tank because the water is below the land rather than next to it. You can also put in fish, which look nice (I have too many in my tank, don't use as many as I have!) If you do decide on something similar to this, make sure you put in something for the newts to be able to climb out of the water. They can swim upwards quite powerfully (at least mine can) but they should have an easy way out of the water. I keep a piece of plexi in the front of the tank sloping from the bottom to the top of the land, but it isn't in the picture. I took it out so my algae eaters could eat the algae because my fish tank didn't have a light for a while and the algae quit growing. I had to sacrifice the clamp lamp I had over the newt tank for my frog tank, and now there isn't enough algae for the algae eater I have in there, so I had to get some feeders for it... Anyway, hope this gives you some ideas.

[fire bellied duck]

thanks so much for the pictures and the advice! but the weirdest thing happened he took on a full recovery exept he is still skiny but he went off the rock and into the water and i didn't see him go back in!AND he ate some blood worms.But i'm still going to exclude him and feed him some small waxworms and maybe some pin head crickets but he is doing alot better thank you so much!



chris

[froggsong]

if you already had him separated, i bet he felt more comfortable and that's why he started getting better. Either way, I'm so glad he is eating!