What to feed salamander morphs?

Hello!

I have two fire bellies (Cynops Orientalis) that have laid eggs several times, but I never manage to get them to survive. The main cause has been my lack of knowledge and the non-existent help I've gotten from pet stores.

I have, fortunately managed pretty well since I found this site until my little larvae metamorphosed. What do I feed them in their terrestrial stage? For how long will the stay that way. Right now I have a small mangrove root in a small tank and the little salamander just sits on it and I can't get him to eat the food he ate without problem while he was still in the water. Granted that food is frozen mosquito larvae that doesn't quite do well on dry land. I read somewhere that earthworms are good food but they are approx. 10 times bigger than he is.

I would be very happy if someone would enlighten me in this matter.

http://www.caudata.org/forum/showthread.php?p=149283

I had similar issues, and this thread is how I dealt with them. In short, I'm having luck with fruit fly larvae, and termites.

Hope this helped.

You have a couple of choices. If you want to continue keeping the newt in a semi-aquatic setup, keep the water shallow. If you have only one or two, I would suggest cutting up the worm and teaching the metamorphs to eat from a toothpick. Thawed bloodworms can also be used like this. See:
http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/worms2.shtml
The other approach is to move them to a terrestrial setup for the first year or so. I use soil for this, with just a water dish, and I feed them primarily fruit flies and pinhead crickets, and blackworms from a dish.

I will move this thread to the Newt Help section, since it seems more suitable.

Thank you both for your fast answers. Using worms as food is a good idea, but it's not something that I can easily get a hold of without destroying the lawn in some nearby park (I live in an apartment and don't have access to soft soil with night crawlers). Furthermore I'm really soft and have difficulty hurting animals (even worms and insects). But the worms gave me the idea to try and feed the little fellow some frozen heart of ox that I originally bought for my adult salamanders and he took it! It just made my day and now I'm hoping he will continue eating it. But I'm not really sure if it's really healthy for him to eat cow heart? I will try with other foods now though, maybe even night crawlers. Perhaps one could chop up a worm in small pieces and then put them in the freezer instead of keeping live worms? That way one would minimize the torture for the worm.

Anyway thanks again for your help!

Valaroma said:

Thank you both for your fast answers. Using worms as food is a good idea, but it's not something that I can easily get a hold of without destroying the lawn in some nearby park (I live in an apartment and don't have access to soft soil with night crawlers). ...........

Click to expand...

An idea that works well in my part of the world -

Take a sheet of cardboard and lay it on the ground at the base of some shrubbery, or another place where there isn't much grass growing. After several days, one morning while it is still damp from dew lift the cardboard and harvest the small earthworms that will be at the surface underneath it. With any luck you'll get quite a few worms small enough to feed without cutting them up.

Ox heart is fine in my opinion(some people disagree on that as its not a 'natural food' for them), but should only be fed occasionaly. Similarly many people will disagree with me that prawn(preferably raw, but cooked works just as well) is an acceptable food, but can be fed occasionaly. Its quite easy to keep a pot of frozen prawn in the bottom of your freezer in case of emergency's. I think its the cynops equivalent of Marmite though, some cant get enough others wont touch it.
White worms and hatchling crickets would be good foods for a small terrestial newt. Cultures/tubs can be bought online if you dont have a local supply and arent difficult to keep going. If you can get worms small enogh use them, you may find if you have to cut them up for him he'll ignore them.
Good luck!