Terrestrial feeding issues - help

LFS had a wholesale plant shipment (Singapore) arrive with quite a few eggs attached to some java fern plants. In the hopes they were viable, they marked an existing 10 gallon tank not for sale and and placed the plants in. ~20 days later, and 11 small larvae were found in the tank. Only one survived to morph, and since I'm the local 'frog guy' they asked me to rescue him.

When I went to pick him up, he was living on the filter hoses and intakes, and they said he didn't go in the water any longer. After some reading and investigation, I've determined he is a Cynops sp. of one sort or another, and has the grainy skin of a terrestrial stage newt.

I have him housed in a 12" Exo-Terra cube 80/20 land water. Tank is well planted, has been up and running for over a year and IMO a very healthy micro-fauna base. Water feature is filtered, 6.6 pH, almost zero hardness, and nitrogen cycle is 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, ~10 nitrate. Land area is a mix of coco coir, hort. grade charcoal, worm casings and fir bark. Lime was added to keep soil from turning acidic, and soil pH reads about 7.2-7.5 . Besides creeping ground cover, cork flats have been provided as hides. The water temp is 70F, overall tank temp is 70, with the highest, driest, and closest to the lamp area about 77F. He has shown no interest in the water feature, but does not seem to mind being soaked when the mister is used on the tank.

The only food this guy has kept down in 8 days is a very small mealworm. He shows no interest in crix, sized from pinheads to 1/4. He will investigate FF larvae and pillbugs, but does not eat them. He will take small waxworms with gusto, but 100% of the time has traveled to the warm side of his enclosure and regurgitated them.

Any help on getting the little guy to eat is greatly appreciated.

I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but I wanted to include any information about the care and setup I thought would be necessary. Thanks again in advance, GB

gbhil said:

I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but I wanted to include any information about the care and setup I thought would be necessary. Thanks again in advance, GB

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Dont apologise - its nice not to have to ask!

How large is he? Could you post a photo(admitedly for my own enjoyment more than helping with diagnosis).

Your temperature is probably a little on the high side, I find juveniles seem more comfortable at a slightly lower temperature to adults.

If he's only recently morphed and quite small the food your offering may be too large. Try hatchling crickets, they can be purchased online quite cheaply. You may not see them eat, but if you dump a load into the tank in most cases they'll disapeer in a couple of days.
You could also try frozen or live bloodworm on a moist paper towel, though many will not take them.
European woodlice tend to be quite large and tough, you can get cultures of dwarf tropical woodlice(Trichorhina tomentosa) which are much small and soft bodied, often cultured as dartfrog food. Once established they breed quickly and in my experience most amphibians will accept them.
You may also have success with small earthworms, which most cynops love, but they would have to be *really* small. Whiteworm and microworm could also be possibilities.

Newts will try and eat anything tasty looking, even if its too much(in some cases not even the fact that they cant get it in their mouths will stop them trying - I sat and watched one of my CO's trying to swallow a whole prawn that fell in the tank by mistake earlier today). It may just be the waxmoth available here(Galleria mellonella) but they're quite big - perhaps too big for a juvenile to digest(hence the regurgitation).

It may be advisable to remove any larger crickets that are already in there, they can cause injury and the stress wouldnt help with the eating problem. Similarly if he's recently been moved into the tank he may just need time to adjust, its not uncommon for a captive animal in a new environment to stop eating untill its settled into its new habitat.

I suspect that if he "investigates" the FF larvae and woodlice he probably eats them when you aren't looking. The same is probably true of the pinheads. You are doing a stellar job of offering him appropriate foods!

Thanks both for the quick answers!
Lasher - I'd say he is about 5 cm. in length. Wife is on a double shift at her job, so pics have to wait until tomorrow. I am not brave enough to ask her where I lost the camera's mem cards and cable until she has had her sleep

About the temps - 70 is as low as I can get my frog room, so the water and overall air temp isn't going to be easy to lower. If it's a definite must, I can rig some contraption with an aquarium chiller to attempt to lower temps, but if 70F will work, I'm much rather try it.

I've not let the crickets in the tank overnight, for exactly what you mention...I can visualize a hungry 1/8th cricket nipping on tiny toes. I can divide a springtail culture and try offering him some of those, as I didn't think of that. I'll also try some smaller compost worms, but will need a few days to flush them clean, as I've already added this years chicken manure to the compost pile. Doubt any newt would be hungry enough to keep one down with semi-hot foul fowl dropping flavor added.

Jennewt - I'm trying my damnedest! I've been removing the pillbugs (the ones i could find) after a few hours so they don't harass the little fellow, but I'll try to leave a few. Any suggestions on fruit peel or other attractant to keep the FF where he can get to them? I know I can drop an apple peel for them to mass on and my frogs could care less, hopefully this can also work for the newt. Would make his life (and mine) easier than picking 80% of what I put in out of the water the next morning.

Once again, thanks for the help. I've become quite attached to this little one in the short time he's been here and will jump through any and all hoops to get him healthy and happy.

One good thing - the wife has made several comments about the beautiful pics in the gallery here and has OK'd another tank or two for some newts in the frog room.

gbhil said:

One good thing - the wife has made several comments about the beautiful pics in the gallery here and has OK'd another tank or two for some newts in the frog room.

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Welcome to the newty-side

Regarding temperature, I find 75F to be the upper limit of what most cynops will tolerate. Some can handle periods of higher temperature for short periods, depending on the species. I'll admit I've only ever kept a handfull of juveniles(orientalis and eniscuada), they did seem to appreciate lower temperatures, and I've always prefered to keep young slightly cooler than adults - perhaps someone with more breeding experience could chip in here.

How big are the crickets you've been offering? When I say hatchling I mean literely 1-2mm in body length. At that size they are safe to leave in for your newt to try as and when he chooses.

I wouldnt go to the effort of removing pill bugs(I'm assuming you mean Armadillium vulgare) as they are non hostile and brilliant vivarium custodians. I've never tried springtails, let me know how that turns out(I intend to start keeping darts again in the near future so will have some around, I like to vary my news diet as much as possible).

I couldnt see apple peel causing any problems.

My photography skills leave much to be desired. Here are a few that came out well enough to keep out of the recycle bin -

Ventral Shot




Upper body structure





Head/Upper body again



Full dorsal view




Yes, he is that black. Without flash washout you can not see the dorsal stripe down the spine.


Good news - it appears he/she ate ~15 FF last night. I left a small piece of pear covered with FF in overnight and today I do not see any in the water, on the pear or crawling about the tank. I'm going to continue trying other foods daily, but will be sure to leave him a FF snack each night after lights out.

With the pics I provided, can you tell if I'm correct about him/her being a Cynops species of some sort? And any pointers towardfs getting a corredct species ID will be appreciated.

I thank you guys once again!

I'd agree Cynops, though not sure on the species.
Looks vey similar to a young Kanto Pyrrhogaster I once had, wouldnt like to say for certain though. I'm really not very good at the ID game!

It's a Cynops orientalis - Chinese Fire Bellied newt. They tend to go through a tricky, fussy eating, terrestrial stage soon after morphing. After a year or so it'll become aquatic and can easily be trained to eat frozen bloodworm.

You've certainly picked a challenging way to enter the newt hobby. Experience with dartfrogs should stand you in good stead with feeding tiny prey. Good luck!

Thanks again gents. Always nice to know what I'm keeping. I've become quite attached to the lil bugger and hope to have him around for quite a while.

The good news is he (or she) l-o-v-e-s termites. Gobbles them as I drop them off the tweezers. Ate about 30 of them last evening HA! Luckily they are easy to harvest out in my overgrown woodlot.

Any issues about feeding termites? Any ideas about gut loading them to tweak their nutritional value?

Glad you found something it will eat readily. I suppose you could dust the termites if you wanted extra assurance... I don't know what their nutritional profile is like.

Sounds like something they'd eat often in the wild. Its a shame that they have such a bad reputation because i'm sure culturing them would be a boon for many captive animals.