Tarichas in bad shape, refusing to eat.

Hi.

I'm an experienced aquarist, but quite new to amphibians. I have kept Xenopus, African Clawed Frogs for many years but they are almost like keeping fish, easier even :happy:.

A local pet shop got some Tarichas about a month ago and it is very rare in my country to get hold of Tarichas. So I asked the shopkeeper to hold a pair of them for me, since I was going out of town for three weeks I didn't want to take them home and then leave them unattended for such a long time, I figured they would be better off staying at the pet shop. At this time they were in good condition and active.

So I get home three weeks later and find that the Tarichas probably haven't had a single bite to eat at the pet shop. They were kept in a tank with several other species, crabs, cichlids, you name it. When I pointed out that the Tarichas were skinny, the guy at the pet shop said that they probably are too slow to get to the food in time and that he felt bad for it.

Anyways, I bring them home and release them in my aquaterrarium. One of them (the least skinny one) is very active the first day and I even feed him some pieces of raw fish meat. The skinnier of the two just crawled in under a plant and hid there.

Since then, a week ago today, they both have been very inactive. Both are just laying under the same plant. I have tried to feed them every day with raw fish and chopped earthworms. The least skinny one have been eating almost every day, but the skinnier of the two just turns his head away from the food. Once I saw him halfheartedly snap his jaws at a piece of earthworm but the next moment he turned his head away.

Today, both of them refused to even be close to the food.

I have read a lot of posts regarding similar problems on this forum, but I'm still wondering if you have any ideas for what I should do to save my Tarichas.

Thanks in advance.

ps (sorry for the long post)

If you can get blackworms, I would put them in a small container with a bunch of blackworms (like putting the Tarichas in a soup of blackworms) for, maybe, ten minutes, and maybe they would eat them, they are hard to resist. If it doesn't work the first day, try again the next day, or the first day in the morning and then again in the evening. Maybe you can get them eating blackworms. Sometimes if you are just persistent, they can come back from the brink of death. Maybe if you keep trying, they'll start to eat, they will eventually start to eat. GOOD LUCK!!

Thanks for the quick reply Otterwoman :happy:.

After searching online for "Blackworms" and the latin name for them, I've found out that they seem not to be available in Sweden. Tubifex worms used to be available in the 70's and 80's but not any more.

One thing we have lots of in the wild this time of the year is mosquito larvae of the species Culex pipiens. Would that be worth a try? They are very common in every pool of water, from small puddles to lakes.

Here is another treatment option......
For newts that have been under severe stress like you have described,I think that maybe a less interactive form of treatment would be helpful.
It seems like your conditions are good, just make sure your temps are low, no higher than 21C, and that the sick newt has a dark secluded and smallish place to hide - like a rock cave or wood hide of somesort where it feels tight and secure. I would not touch it or interact with it at all. If you must check to see how it is doing when it is hiding, I would do that in very dim light so that you don't take away it's feeling of security.
I would use a wet paper towel and set it on top of your supstrate outside of it's hide and put small pieces of chopped nightcrawler on the towel - maybe around 1 cm sized pieces, dusted with vitamin powder perferably. This size of pieces should move a little bit and the paper towel should keep them from getting lost in the supstrate - add them in the evening right before all activity and lights are out.
When newts are under prolonged stress, their immune system breaks down, which causes lack of appetite and leaves them suseptible to all kinds of illnesses. If you can get it's bearings back so that it isn't stressed it's own immune system will kick in and it's appetite should come back.
If it really hasn't eaten in a month and a half or so,then if it starts eating be careful to only give it a small piece or two. Too much food on a starved stomach can cause more problems.

That is very good advice, but I just want to add that while I think mosquito larvae are attractive food and many of my newts go for them, I don't know if yours are in hunting mode right now. (I'm not clear if the plants your newts are hiding under are on land or in the water). If you get desperate you could certainly try them, but they are so tiny and wiggly, hardly much nutrition, and they need something more--like the nightcrawlers that Audrey recommends.

Thanks very much for your replies. :happy:

They are hiding under the leaves of an orchid on land and they are very inactive, they move less than 2 inches/day. The temperature is 22 degrees C at the moment, I'm afraid it was perhaps around 26 a few days ago because of the weather. I have had the lights off in the tank for the entire time i've had them, only feeding them during daylight.

The air in the tank is rather humid. Any advice on optimal humidity during their recovery? Should i spray them with water mist? (i do this several times/week for the sake of the plants).

I will try the method with the papertowel this evening.

Keep trying with earthworms, or give slugs and waxworms a try.
I wouldn´t feed them fish, as it´s far from an ideal food for caudates, specially those not adapted to catching them in the wild.
Don´t disturb them and most of all, don´t insist on feeding them if they show no interest...i find that it stresses them at all and it makes them starve for longer.

What kind of lid do you have on your tank? If your lid is glass, you will want to switch it to a screen lid, that may not be as good for your plants but it will be much better for your newts. It is good to have air circulation. As far as humidity goes, ideally you want to provide them with a variation - which is some what challenging in a small tank but the best way to achieve it is to have the "land" sloping from one side of the enclosure to the other with your water area in the lowest part. Then you can mist heavily near the water and have the "highest" land area remain much drier. That way the newts can choose their own humidity and moisture.

Ok I will continue trying.

I am really trying to disturb them as little as possible, very gently opening the lid, slowly approaching them with the food etc. The tank is in our bedroom, so they are left alone all day long.

Audrey - The landscape in the tank i constructed just as you mentioned, sloping with water at one end and dry land at the other, there's an internal filter powering a tiny waterfall too. The lid is made of two pieces of glass with the corners made of mesh and a strip along the front made of mesh too. If I slide the foremost glasslid back over the other, the mesh strip at the front gets wider and the tank gets less humid, and vice versa.

Update - Just wanted to share this success story.

When I was away on a trip in late July, one evening my girlfriend first handfed the healthy one until it was full and then left some food directly beside the orchid leaf that the skinny one was hiding under and in the morning the food was gone. I know this was no guarantee that the skinny one ate it, but there is a high probability that it was.

So I started to do this every day, some mornings the food would be gone and some mornings it was still there.

After about a week the skinny one decided to move to the other end of the tank which made it even more probable that it was the one eating during the nights (the food was now served far away from the other Taricha).

During the last 10 days or so the skinny one is getting visibly healthier, it has relatively wider girth and stubbier legs and every evening at about 18:00 it comes out from hiding and sits on top the same piece of moss, so i have started to leave its food on that spot.

The day before yesterday I actually vitnessed it eat for the first time.

And I just watched it eat for the second time, just now before I wrote this.

It is truly amazing that it did survive this ordeal, it probably did not eat at all for almost two months and when it was at its worst it looked more dead than alive, it's legs were thin as matchsticks and it looked like a skeleton wrapped in skin.