Question: I am almost positive.....

My female Taricha is gravid...my issue or question is, I have those plastic plants in my tank and rocks, if she does lay the eggs, where will she lay them? She has been just sitting on top of the plants, kinda zonin out. She ate yesterday, but this morning I noticed her belly was like a pear and sitting there. Should I isolate her from the male in a different tank?

jendog35 said:

My female Taricha is gravid...my issue or question is, I have those plastic plants in my tank and rocks, if she does lay the eggs, where will she lay them? She has been just sitting on top of the plants, kinda zonin out. She ate yesterday, but this morning I noticed her belly was like a pear and sitting there. Should I isolate her from the male in a different tank?

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If she is wild caught, I suggest introducing a live plant or two. Even if she is captive bred/raised she will prefer to lay on living plants. Lastly I would wait to remove the male as not to interupt their full breeding relationship(of course, if he is feeding on her eggs remove him!), until she has layed at least a few clusters. I would aslo remove female when completely finshed laying, or if she starts eating eggs. If she does start eating eggs, remove the eggs attatched to whatever she chose and put them in a tank that has good "aged" water with a bubbler for aeration and to create a SOFT current. The female should be left in the breeding tank as long as possible to allow her to lay all the eggs(process for some species can take a few weeks to finish). Sorry, but one more thing is that some plastic plants don't allow her to fold edges over the egg b/c they are too stiff. This will cause her to not lay, or lay in unnatural and not ideal locations.

ack.
in other words, thank you.

There have been surprisingly few cases of Taricha laying eggs in captivity. All of my females have been gravid at one point, but none ever laid eggs.

should I just leave her alone then? I was thinking about a newt shower or something. but seriously, I have extra tanks that I could isolate her in. I have been waiting to see some liddle newts runnin around! but if not, they are still wonderful creatures. I will put a pic up when I get home.

I didn't think it was the time of year.

hmm..i'll double check, but she didn't look bloated..she was definetly a pear shaped female...my newts are always "newtin"...my male is very "aggessive"..

My male was also very... insistent. And my females were almost always pear shaped, but nothing ever came of it. But I wish you the best of luck. I'd be cool to have some more cb Taricha around.

well, they were going at it 2 nights ago..and only this morning or maybe the way she was floating, she just looked more plump then any other time...I will put a pic up when I get home tonight.