Newbie here ...

Hello everybody! My name is Shannon and, well I'm new around here. Currently, I have just newt, it's name is Belly Button. The store I bought it from called it a rough skinned newt, but after reading this (fantastic) website, I'm pretty sure it's actually either a female crested newt, or a fuzhong warty newt. Hopefully at some point I can upload some pics and maybe you guys can help me determine what he actually is... anywho, I'm looking forward to talking to everyone here! Hey, by the way ... this little blue guy is the freakiest emotocon I've ever seen.

Welcome to the forum, Shannon.

yeah stores don't know anything. Just for info what store did you buy the newt from, and what kind of environment were they using to house them? Welcome to caudata!

He came from a little mom-and-pop pet store called Pet World. With the exception of thier amphibians, the other animals for sale actually look quite healthy. (and the don't sell puppies or kittens) My only gripes are with the large White's and green tree frogs being kept in the same set ups as anoles - WAY too dry in there I'd say. And obviously they don't know much about newts. I think there were five or six firebellies and the one "rough skin" in a mini-bow 2.5 gallon. (much no small, no?) There was a plastic rock for them to climb on, and some plants too.

Well you certainly have given your newt a unique name. Fuzhong warty newts and great crested newts are both very different animals.

I suspect it must be some kind of warty newt. It would be astronomically unlikely to find a crested newt in a pet shop in the US. Take a look at the pages of photos linked from here:
http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/firebelly.shtml
A true rough-skinned newt would look like these:
http://www.caudata.org/cc/species/Taricha/T_granulosa.shtml

After looking over the species section here again, I’m pretty sure that he is either a Fuhzong or Chinese warty newt. First time I went to the store they had a few newts, some with very distinct crests, some without. They were labeled “crested newts - males and females” . A few months went by and I went back to the store, I intended to buy a pair of cresteds but they only had firebellies (not sure if they were Chinese or Japanese) and one big “rough skinned newt”. Later I was looking through the species profiles on this site and I figured out that he probably wasn’t a rough skinned newt after all. The rough skinned have orange bellies without spots, while Belly Button has a black stomach with large-ish orange blotches. That pattern extends up his “chin”, unlike the female cresteds, which seem to have little white speckles on the chin. The other thing which makes me think he’s a Fuzhong is that the last time I went to that store, they had a tank full of paddle tails, which come from a similar part of the world as the Chinese and Fuhzong do. What do you guys think? I really need to get a digital camera, but I swear he looks exactly like the Fuhzong do