Question: C. Orientalis Broken arm?

Hi guys

I recently moved my 2 fire bellies from their tiny quarantine tank (2.5 G of water) to a 40 gallon breeder with 6-7 inches of water. In the quarantine tank I had also 5 ghost shrimps. I say had because we found pieces of them all over, which we knew was going to happen.
The day we moved our girls (I think they are girls, I need to post a picture for confirmation) we noticed that our fattest one was shedding and she was not using one of her legs, which is at a strange angle.
They are eating, they are shedding and they are real speed demons in this new tank, even with 2 nano filters, even if I was advice to have no filter because they are clumsy and bad swimmers. They climb into plants too, so I am guessing she is not too hurt even with a broken leg!?
Now I watched a video of a FB eating a ghost shrimp and I was wondering if she could have broken her leg in trashing around while killing a large shrimp?

If the damaged leg isn't an old injury that healed up badly, I would say it's most likely the result of crushing or getting it trapped somewhere. It's possible that one of the other newts could have grabbed it by accident at feeding time, but I don't think H. orientalis are cannibalistic or aggressive enough for this to be likely. Either way there's not much you can do to treat it other than keep an eye on it and hope it heals up of it's own accord, If the newt seems to be struggling at all it might be better to move it to a tank on it's own where there would be no competition at feeding time.

Aquatic newts can be kept in un-filtered tanks, but there should be ridiculous amounts of live plants instead. The plants provide a huge surface area for the good bacteria that purify the water to grow and will also remove ammonia directly from the water, so in effect the plants are your filter. If you don't have many live plants (there should always be some in a tank for Chinese firebellies) I would always recommend a filter of some sort.
Hope this helps.

I actually have both filtration: filter and a lot of plants that they have been using as hammock!

So I guess she is fine since she is still the most inquisitive and the biggest one in there. My husband also did some research and as you said, the best way to fix it seems to just let them take care of it. We are keeping an eye on it for fungus or anything like that, but it seems fine for now, it's just that when she walks at the bottom of the tank she looks silly.

As long as the skin isn't broken and she's active and feeding she should be fine. In the past I've seen wild L. vulgaris that judging by the scars have obviously had really nasty crushing injury's in the past, but somehow healed up more or less fine on their own.