I have eggs!

I just bought 3 newts from a pet store, (I realize that pet store buying is frowned upon.) I'm not a huge newt enthusiast, but I think they're a cute and I take good care of them. I feed them freeze-dryed bloodworms and they only have fake floating plants. I've had them for three or four days now.
This morning I realized that there are 5 little eggs in the shallow water on their big rock. I read the article entitled "Raising newts from eggs" but it never said anything about how to get the eggs off the rocks without hurting them. I'm willing to take the time and energy into making these eggs grow into healthy little newts, but I'm afraid I'm not quite sure where to begin. I'd hate to hurt the eggs.
I have a little kit for brine-shrimp and I have some tiny baby ones that are ready to be fed to my boyfriends little knife-fish, so I have that to feed them when/if they hatch.
Isn't it extremely unusual for eggs to be laid in a new tank?

ive also wondered about removing eggs from rocks....I assume you just gently kinda wipe them off with your hands

I tried that with one of the eggs that was laid above water level. It doesn't work so well. That sticky gluey stuff is really strong. I'm so afraid to hurt them!
One of the eggs laid above water level has dried out I think I may have damaged the one above water level that I tried to move, too. So there are now three beautiful little eggs stuck on the top of the rock and I just found one in the "root" of one of my fake floating plants.
It's so cool to be able to see the little tan speck in the egg and know that it's a baby growing!

A, you should feed your newts something other than freeze-dried worms. These are very poor, nutritionally speaking. Try offering chopped earthworms, or if you can find them in a pet shop, blackworms. These are much better for your animal.

Also, be sure you provide lots of places for the animals to hide and to get out of the water.

As for the eggs, you can put them in their own tank without removing them from the rock.

OMG! So I turn my back for a minute and two of my beautiful eggs on the rock disappeared! I still have one on the rock and one in the plant root! I know it's just natural for my newts to eat the eggs, but it's so sad!! I'm gonna try to find something big enough to put the rock in...This is so new to me, and I'm so bummed about the other two eggs. I suppose a lot more will be laid, and a lot more will die before anything hatches. I'm a big girl. I can handle this.

When I change the water for the eggs, can I just use filtered water? I'm in Alaska and it's 15 above, I don't have access to pond water. I could use water from the newt tank, but it's just filtered water that has had newts in it for 3 days. More "established" than filtered water, I guess. I honestly have no idea how to do this, but I don't want them to die.
The rock the eggs are on is pretty big, so I'm having a hard time trying to find something else to put it in. Unfortunately, I don't happen to have any unused 10 gallon tanks lying around.

Thanks, Kaysie. I'll see what I can find.

It is not very unusual for newts fresh from the pet shop to lay eggs, especially at this time of year. The newts were in the wild preparing to breed just a few weeks ago, so they are just completing the process in your tank.

What kind of newt(s) do you have? They may prefer other material to lay eggs on, it depends on the type of newt.
http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/firebelly.shtml

When you say filtered water, what kind of filter are we talking about? Most probably this water is fine to use.

I have successfully removed newt eggs from rocks by using a straight-edge razor blade to carefully cut the jelly from the rock. It works best if the rock is fairly smooth.

(Message edited by jennewt on March 25, 2007)

My newts are Chinese Fire Bellies (Cynops orientalis.)
The water is just filtered with a brita.
The rock the eggs are on is really flat/smooth, so I think the razor might work really well. Right now I just have a small glass container over them so the newts won't eat them.
I put in some more plants that I think would be good for egg laying.
Thank you! I'll keep you updated.

Just to be aware, brine shrimp are great to feed out, but it is best to feed them when they are freshly hatched so it is useful to set up batches so that you can feed them out freshly hatched to the newt larvae on a daily basis. Also you must try to ensure that unhatched egg casing are removed as much as possible as these can block the tiny guts of the new larvae. The brine shrimp should also be rinsed with fresh water to remove salt.
Once larvae are a week old or so, they can then be offered live blackworms, cut with a razor, which the newts will suck up like spaghetti.

All this info was given to me by Jennifer and Michael Schrom, so I hope that they will forgive me if I have some info wrong, but this worked for my little Emperors and it was great to watch them grow.

(Message edited by dragonwalker on March 27, 2007)

(Message edited by dragonwalker on March 27, 2007)