pretruding bone

sad story... i baught 2 cynops orientalis from a pet shop to save them from the heated water, they were fine at first but soon began loosing fingers, female is recovered and back in tank but has a fingerless hand, the other smaller male had a very swollen arm which is now gone, there is a stump with 2 bones pretruding out a few mm, i will post photo, i have been dabbing it with hydrogen peroxide and rinsing to fight infection, will the pertruding bones need to be cut off? who can do this and how? he wasnt eating 'tweezer worms' in dirt quarentine so i put him in some water with blood worms but he still wouldnt eat, while he is recovering from lost arm should he be in dirt quarantine or in water? any advise anyone?

I would keep him in water as taking him out of his natural enviroment may cause stress and hamper recovery. The two bones you mention should fall off in time the new growth should start. I would let him settle and leave treatment for now to see if he will resume feeding, just look out for infection or fungus starting and try to keep the water clean...

I wish there were a reliable answer, Sam. When it comes to "home treatment" of newts, you just have to take your best guess as to what would make the animal the most comfortable and discourage infection. If the newt is currently land-adapted, then the dirt quarantine might be the way to go. If the newt prefers water, then I would agree with Ian's advice.

Oh Sam, I am sorry to hear about the plight of your cynops.

The problem with rescuing a newt from a pet shop is that you are not only getting animals which may be difficult to wean back to health but you are encouraging the pet shop to order more of the newts and keep them in equally bad conditions. So while you alleviate immediate suffering of one or two newts, you put a larger demand on collecting more newts from the wild.

On a good note, if your newts pull through the infection, stress, shock, and return to feeding...they will regrow their limb back by themselves without any outside help (about 7-10 weeks). If you can find a veternarian in the area which specializes in amphibians, he/she may be able to check your newts out and see if they need antibiotics or other medications.

Hopefully the newts make it through!

thanks everyone, i wont buy from a petshop again, the female is doing ok now, but sadly the male is dead.

First, you should avoid ever using hydrogen peroxide to treat wounds, particularly on amphibians. It's a common mistake many people make, they think it disinfects the wound. It does do that, but it does so by aggressively oxidising proteins, both foreign body and host. In other words, it eats away at ALL tissue. Basically, each time you apply it, it will eat away at any of the healing tissue that has grown since the last time and promote scar tissue.

Second, although newts are extremely well known for their regenerative abilities, if scar tissue has formed, it will impede regeneration. Regeneration works great for damage from extremities being bitten off or similar, but doesn't tend to work with things like caustic degeneration or microbial/mycological infection.

If the newt is primarily land adapted, I'd keep her on moist, unbleached paper towels for a while. If water adapted, clean water in an empty enclosure with a few rocks to emerge upon. For the possible infection on the hand, use a topical ointment such as Polysporin. It will wash off or wear off in either case relatively fast, but some of the antibiotics will be absorbed into the tissue before this happens, and the antibiotics in Polysporin are hard to beat. Hope this helps.