I have no idea what they're doing!

Hello, i've just registered.

I have recently - about 2 weeks ago - acquired my first newts. From the information here i'm fairly certain that they're chinese fire bellies. Everything seemed to have been going swimmingly until a few days ago. Three of the four are getting pretty fat. I'm worried because the roundedness doesn't look very even - it's sort of lumpy? I have read the information about bloat and i'm not sure whether or not it's that because they haven't gone dark and shiney - quite pale in fact - and they don't have swollen throats.
Is this just because it hasn't progressed yet, constipation or nothing but me being oversensitive to them?

They are living in a tank that is 30x12x15 inches and have an elite stingray 10 filter.
They did have their first earthworm yesterday. Each of them had a go at rolling it about like a mini croc but none of them actually ate it. I threw it out when they seemed to loose interest.

Here they are, i apologise for the poor quality of some of the pictures.

Unfortunately I can only answer the food part of the question. It looks like the worm on the picture is just way too big for the newt to eat. If possible you should feed them smaller ones. If that is not possible you can cut them into pieces. Disgusting, but it works.

I am no expert on CFB's ( I do have one of my own though) but, it sounds to me like they could be gravid (full of eggs). Do you know if they are female? They look like they could be in breeding condition to me.

All of the photos are of males. Healthy newts can get a bit pudgy in captivity but if they're eating well, and females tend to eat more than males. Show us a photo of one of the fatter ones. And yes they're Chinese Fire-bellied Newts.

if they manage to get one of those worms down that could explain the pudginess. They look fit enough to me, a newt with bloat won't eat.

Thanks Everyone!

Yep, they are all males and i'm starting to think that they were just having a bad couple of days as the fatties have slimmed out a bit and even the poor scrawny little one who wouldn't eat is enjoying breakfast. Still pretty pale though.

I was going to try getting some live blackworm today from a bait shop as i've heard them mentioned on here and get the impression that they're smaller.

I do have another unrelated question though - what is the optimum pH for these little guys? We have a pretty low pH here in the tap water so i've been putting a tiny bit of bicarb in the water before adding it to the tank to bring it up to around 7. Is that the right thing to do?

Thanks for all the advice!

Riversource, bicarb will work, but if you want a little less labor intensive way to bring up your pH (in addition to adding a nice buffer, which is what bicarb does), you can get a stocking or mesh bag and fill it with bird grit or crushed coral and put that either just in the tank, or in the filter.