Chinese Fire bellies- Size?

Small FBN

I too bought a runt Chinese FBN.
It too seemed unwanted and is also only about 2.5 inches.
He was living (or hiding) two inches of water in a small tank with a small turtle. The salesman suggested I might want to wait a week or two until he got in some larger ones, but I needed as soon as I saw him/her?
It must have been stressed as for the first couple of weeks would not go in the water and really refused the freeze dry shrimp and tublifex I was trying to feed it.
A couple of weeks later I found another pet store with larger ones and picked up a very active three inch specimen.
The salesman recommended frozen blood worms, and what a difference!
Both are now very active, nearly always in the water hunting for food.
I understand they should be fed only every other day but I find hard not to feed them every day as they seem to live to eat.

Co's can potentially reach 4 inches/10cm in size. I have two males (unknown ages, I bought them from a kid who no longer wanted them) and they are each a little over 3 inches long. Males have shorter tails than females and may be smaller in body size all around. Mine really like frozen blood worms, chunks of earthworms, and black worms. I don't think I have ever had a newt that was fond of tubifex worms, freeze dried of frozen. You can also try live white worms. They are easy to culture and small enough that you don't have to chop them up before feeding them to smaller newts like C. orientalis.

jewett said:

. . . I don't think I have ever had a newt that was fond of tubifex worms, freeze dried of frozen. You can also try live white worms. They are easy to culture and small enough that you don't have to chop them up before feeding them to smaller newts like C. orientalis.

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40 years ago, incorrectly keeping the odd FBN with my tropical fish, they did not have any choice until they escaped the confines to perish, as, as a kid, fish flakes and freeze dried tubifex was about all I knew about.

The thing with frozen tubifex is that they are really pale in colour and fine (thin) compared to blood worms so they are much harder for the newts to find. While they do go for it, especially until the clump starts separate, my pair seems to get frustrated looking for them biting each other sometimes.

Will stick with blood worms for now.

My C. cyanurus get living tubifex regularly and it is always gone rapidly. (I once asked if they liked it but they wouldn't answer)

Thanks . . .
I guess they don't like to talk with their mouths full . . . lol