Question: Dealing with Escape Artists!

I'm having such an ordeal here! Over the past 3-4 years I have had several Eastern Spotted Newts. I had a 40-wide that had a sealed glass top for it, never had any issues. However I now have a bow-front 45 gal that, over the past 2 years or so, I've lost EIGHT freaking newts! I have tried covering every hole I can find.

The main issue is I have an LED light that runs along the middle, and that's all open air. The bowed side of the tank is completely covered. The back side has a piece of plexi with some cutouts for the filter pipes. The pipes are surrounded with plastic to fill in the holes. The sides where the light sits on the tank are both covered.

This apparently isn't working! I got a new batch of newts less than a month ago, 4 of them. Two of them have escaped and I already found the corpse of one.

I've attached pics to show what I'm talking about. Very obviously not the most glamorous solution. Any help? Ideas? I haven't used a completely sealed top of this because of the light, I was told that a light going through the glass really cuts down on the usefulness of the light. Both of the sides usually have things holding them down so they can't be moved, I removed those to take the pics.

This gap between the lid and the lighting makes it easy to escape. Especially if the newts climb along this crosswise brace.
If you could lower the lighting this problem should be fixed. Otherwise you could get a suitable acrylic lid, even if it reduces the brightness or filter out some (probably) benefitial radiation. It's still better than escaped newts.

Jensino said:

This gap between the lid and the lighting makes it easy to escape. Especially if the newts climb along this crosswise brace.
If you could lower the lighting this problem should be fixed. Otherwise you could get a suitable acrylic lid, even if it reduces the brightness or filter out some (probably) benefitial radiation. It's still better than escaped newts.

Click to expand...

Hmm great idea! I pulled the supports for the lights out a bit, so that the bars are resting on the side of the tank. That brings the light almost completely flush with the top. Fingers crossed this will help!