This is gonna seem really silly...

so as you probably know, i just recently aquired a C. orientalis, for the last couple days he hasn't touched the water for more than a couple minutes before freaking out, today however he allowed me to submerge him, no, i didn't grab him and sink him by force, he was in his normal swimming panic mode and he latched onto my finger, normally this is all he does, but today he crawled up my finger and on the back of my hand, so i just started lowering my hand into the water diagonally (so the water didn't stir and scare him) and he just stayed on the back of my hand until it hit the bottom, at which point he crawled off my hand and walked into the hollowed out tree stump thingy, he's been in there for like 1 hour and half, im kind of concerned about this, i read the careshett on C. orientalis and i read up on newts in general with google (i don't recall finding a faq about newts in general on this site, the c. oreintalis caresheet however was very helpful even tho i have read it like 8 times already...) and i saw that they breathe through their skin and their mouths, now this is the silly part (besides my attrocious sentence structure, just one big run-on-sentence, it has always been my crutch, oh well), im not sure if he needs to come to the surface to breathe like a betta or if he just absorbs the air in the water through his skin.

i keep the water plenty airated with an air-stone driven under-gravel filter and he has plenty of places to escape the water if he needs to, im still worried tho (i haven't seen him once since he vanished into his lair).

thanks, and im really sorry about the sentence structure, i never did get a grip on that from my english teachers and i doubt i ever will get a handle on it, but im still trying, plz be kind!

okay, so he just popped out after i dropped in some blood worms (frozen), he just sat at the entrance and looked at me as if i he was saying "did you do that? I WAS NAPPING DOWN HERE when all of a sudden some mook dropped worms on my head! JERK!!!" and then he casually walked back inside, so i know he is alive.

im still curious about his breathing tho, there might an air-bubble in there that is breathing from, what if that bubble is exhausted and is filled with CO2, could he poison himself?! are newts capable of deliberate suicide?

If he isn't a juvenille and hasn't got gills anymore then he won't be able to breathe underwater. He will need to come up for air at some point, have you seen him swim at all? I didn't realise they could hold their breath for hour and a half though but then again I have never watched for that long either...

i don't see any gills or any indication of gills, he has not swam up from his hiding place at all, the brief moment when he popped out and seemingly glared at me is the last time i saw him, i don't see any escaping air bubbles or any signs of trouble so i assume he is not stuck or trapped. im just so confused, it's been 2 and a half hours since he initially submerged and i haven't seen him swim for air, this would be a feat worthy of legend in humans.

The fact that they need to gulp air doesn´t mean they don´t obtain oxygen by the skin too. The more dissolved oxygen there is in the water, the longer they can "hold their breath".

is there anyway i can determine the amount of dissolved oxygen in my water? or is it basically just a good guess no matter what i do?

he has still not come up for air...

Azhael said:

The fact that they need to gulp air doesn´t mean they don´t obtain oxygen by the skin too. The more dissolved oxygen there is in the water, the longer they can "hold their breath".

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Ah my mistake I was not aware of this...How interesting!

But seriously shmift I really wouldn't lose any sleep over this if I was you, I doubt amphibians would have lasted millions of years on earth if they didn't have instinct to swim and find air if they need it... He's fine

ya, i know he's fine, i've seen him romping around the bottom, finding little caves where there shouldn't be any... in any case he is fine and he still hasn't surfaced for air, crazy.