What happens to orange belly when newt get old?

hello, my friend gave me 6 newts that he had for 5 years, 4 of them have orange bellys and 1 of them has orange/yellow dotted belly and one of them appears to have all the orange dots turned yellow, now i am hoping this is because he is older then the other ones, his eyes are a bit foggy as well and he doesnt move around much. any information on this? oh and they are all Japanese fire belly newts.. the one with the yellow dots on the undersite also seems to have a bit of discolouration on the outer skin, like white blotches

Yellow is not a sign of age, but simply a sign the newt didn't get the pigments needed to develop the belly. Cloudy eye etc. is likely due to stress. Conditions of the tank(size, inhabitants, temp. etc.) would be helpful to find out and solve the problem.

ok it is 25 gallon tank, there is 15 galons of water in the tank, the temprature is a constant 80 F or 26.5 C, there is 6 newts all together, 3 columbian red tail tetras, 3 silver dollars, 3 feeder fish, 3 apple snails, 1 bushy nose algea eater. 7 aquatic plants 10% of the thank land built from rocks, the species is a japanese fire belly newt, they were given to me after the owner had them for 5 years, that is why i was wondering if maybe this one newt is getting old, i have no idea of the average life span of these newts. I also understand that ideal temprature for the newts is 60-70 F although the previous owner said this temprature would be fine as they are a hardy species. anyways i am open to what you have to say about this any help would be appreciated and advice strongly considred.
Dan

Dan- you have all those housed together in one tank?

Sounds like the newt could be suffering from the heat. Newts do not do well for very long at "tropical fish" temperatures. JFB have been known to live for 10-50 years in captivity, so 5 years is not old (unless the newt was old when it was caught, there's no way of knowing). See:
http://www.caudata.org/cc/faq/faq.shtml

What are you feeding them? If they don't get the right foods, their belly color will wash out to yellow after a period of time.

I am feeding them every 3 days 3 cubes of frozen blood worms that are about 4 grams each, so appx 12 grams of frozen blood worms, PLUS, when i feed the fish, they jump up and and try to eat the flakes... i also have these special bottom feeder pellets that i use to feed the snails, but after about 2 minutes one of the newts smells it and starts hunting it down, and when it finds the pellet it swallows it.. so i have no idea how to lower the temprature.. id rather lower the temprature and see what happens, but ever since i added the plants the newts seem to be happier

I did some more research and realized that my species type of *Sasayama or Tamba race: there is one in the picture that has the same type of yellow belly that i had described, look at the Sasayama or tamba race in the middle of the page and the one on the left has the same coloration as the one i described above http://www.caudata.org/cc/species/Cynops/C_pyrrhogaster.shtml .. so any suggestion on whta to do now?

The FAQs (linked above) contain suggestions for how to lower the tank temperature. I really think that you would do better with two separate tanks, one for the tropical fish and one for the newts.

On the sheet you linked, I'm not exactly sure which photo you mean... who is the photographer and what does the caption under the photo say?

The foods you are using should be OK for maintaining belly color. I don't know why they would be fading, unless it's a general health issue of some kind.

ok the picture i am talking about on that page, is amongst the paragraphs that describe the different races of the Japanese Fire Belly and is found inbetween the descriptions of "hiroshima race" and "Atsumi race" underneath the photo it says
C. pyrrhogaster Sasayama
and the photographer is Ralph Reinartz
let me know what you think of that type of color on the belly as apposed to the rest of them of that race which share the color of the one right beside it

The one in that photo looks like a normal variation in color. Not all firebellies are flaming red. You might want to get a different kind of fish food and/or pellets; make sure it contains carotene in some form. Also make sure it's made for carnivorous types of fish.

Ok thank you everybody i have taken your advices i got a new aquirium for the fish and i am going to keep them seperated hopefully everything will be ok now i love my newts they are amazing