Hello from Austria

Hello Everybody!
I am very happy to join the Caudata community here, as news and salamanders have always fascinated me! Just a few words about myself:
I have studied botany and I am now working in the field of plant ecology at the University of Vienna, with a special focus on the ecology of habitats affected by mining.
Since I saw my first Salamandra salamandra as a child, I have a strong interest in Caudata. For many years, I have been keeping Cynops pyrrhogaster and Ambystoma mexicanum at home (and also Bombina orientalis and B. variegata, though these are of course frogs).
Furthermore, I love to search and observe our native terrestrial salamanders (S. salamandra and S. alpine) in the field, and sometimes I am able to contribute to the recent mapping activities (http://alpensalamander.eu/blog/) that aim to study the differences in habitat preference in these two species.
Only recently, I was able to combine my professional interest in mine waste habitats and my private interest in amphibians, when I found that some highly contaminated habitats still host remarkable numbers of amphibians - a fact so far unknown.

Welcome! Nice to have an extra field observer on this forum.

Hello!

I'm a new member, too!

My name is Susan and I live in Ontario, Canada in an area that is very rich in many minerals including the largest deposit of nickel on earth.

As you imagine, our water is hard.

I keep Chinese fire-belly newts and wonder if the hardness of my water is too hard or not. The reading I get for GH is120 ppm (mg/L). I can reduce that considerably if I filter the water through a charcoal Brita filter. Then I get a reading of 60ppm (mg/L). I have tried with no success to find out what the hardness of the native water for these newts would be. I hesitate to make any changes to the water quality as my newts, so far, appear to be thriving.

Any ideas you could share?

Thanks, Susan