Tail fanning behavior in N. kaiseri

So, thirty hours after opening the box all four animals have entered the aquatic part of their enclosure. When I returned home from work this afternoon, one of the males is tail fanning! The female with the enlarge cloaca has been hanging out very close watching him. No sight of a spermatophore as i write this, but the lighting is very dim and I do not want to disturb them.

Upon arrival both males and one of the females showed engorged cloaca, making sexing them easy. I was a little shocked to see fanning behavior this soon.

My question is this: Is this relatively normal? The fanning starting this soon after entering the water seems odd to me. Is this just a behavior this species does often similar to the "constant amplexus" of B. orientalis?

Here is a short video with additional information I made as I am still a bit disbelieving of what my eyes are seeing.

(video to follow as Youtube uploading is slow as ever)

Well, doesn't migration usually culminate in mating behavior? And didn't they just migrate quite a distance to you? Maybe even though it was just migrating through the mail, don't they have some magnetic way of noting location that may have been stimulated? Perhaps in captivity, any major environmental change initiates breeding behavior.

I was thinking something along those lines too. However it would be shocking to me that a 24 hour trip could trigger such behavior. Perhaps it is just the presence of water since they have been kept terrestrially for a while.

(Nothing like a new species in the program to get the research juices pumping!)

SludgeMunkey said:

My question is this: Is this relatively normal? The fanning starting this soon after entering the water seems odd to me.

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Yes, in my observations this is normal behavior in this species and precedes mating. Good luck!

Are they adults or juveniles, Johnny? I suspect they are CB juveniles, right?
If they are young juveniles i would think their behaviour is not associated with breeding, despite males being precocious.
If they are adults or sub-adults, then you may well have a surprise soon xD

By the way, congratulations on your new newts!!!! Certainly a stunning and fascinating species. We are waiting for pics, so hurry up

I forgot to mention, that it´s my experience that some of my animals start to show mating behaviour or in fact start breeding right after being transported from my home city to the city where i live and study. I ignore the reason, but it never fails!

UPDATE:

Things are going very well in my breeding endeavors with this species. So far, out of eight adults I have gotten 200+ eggs. Sadly, only roughly 40 were viable.

I have been experimenting with both temperature and water chemistry. I have also been working very, very hard on their diets.

My theories thus far: (Please keep in mind it will take years to prove most of these, I am posting this information in the hopes others will try my techniques)

Not only is a temperature drop required (nothing new here) a drop in barometric pressure is required too. Thankfully the brutal winter storms we have been getting in my part of the world are helping this aspect out quite well.

I have found that rapidly increasing water levels in conjunction with a slight increase in temperature triggers spawning behavior in a matter of a few hours.

My pairs I have on an all arthropod diet are the only ones to produce viable eggs. The pairs on the "standard salamander and newt diet" do the dance, but do not produce.

The presence of both limestone and dolomite have a dramatic affect on the spawning behaviors of this species. Not only have I now included both types of stone in the tanks, I have taken to aging spring water with crushed samples of these stones in it. The dolomite is vitally important for the magnesium carbonate content!

While it is a royal pain to keep clean, I found this species prefers a rocky bottom, so river rock is heavily incorporated in the tank. Both above and beloy surface caves and crevices are important.

As suspected by many folks, water movement is quite important. I believe however that moderate current in the tank directly after a water change for 24 hours followed by slowly tapering of to stagnant water is the key. ()I use a small fountain pump, followed with just an air stone and then tapering off to no current in the tank at all. I found that adjusting the diet to match the water flow type appears to have an affect also. Stream type crustacea in moving water and pond type crustacea in stagnation has produced amazing results.


Finally, by use of the internet, I have found that these animals prefer little to no lighting. so far, experimentation has resulted in my specimens being kept under the following lighting conditions in this order:

18 hours of darkness
1 hour ambient light
1 hour LED light
1 hour Aquarium Florescent light
2 hours LED light
1 hour ambient light

I have utilized a bank of mechanical lighting timers to do the trick. It took a bit of work to get them synchronized up properly, but the results are fantastic. I came up with this lighting scheme as a result of study of the habitats they inhabit in the wild. Given the nearly cave like nature of much their streams they rarely are exposed to any bright lighting.

Wow!!! My initial novice reaction is that that seems awfully complicated. I would love to hear about the breeding/housing setups of others who are sucessfully keeping these newts. Are they having success with radically different approaches than the one you outlined?

I bought my N kaiseri a few months back specifically because they are colorful, will eat frozen tropical fish foods, and can tolerate temperatures in the mid 70s, which is the temperature of the room the dart frogs, parrots and tropical fish are also in. This is my first venture into newts after a lifetime of tropical fish and a few years with frogs. The information I have located on N kaiseri is certainly scant and often contradictory. The fellow I bought mine from, I believe keeps and breeds his totally aquatic and that is the way I have kept my 4 6-month juvies. My 20h tank has florescent lights on 10 hours a day and I often see the newts up front during the day looking for frozen bloodworms or floating live wingless fruitflies. They have not gone back on land once after the first day as far as I can see though there is a floating log in the tank. I am using salt water aquarium sand for the floor with several small river stones, and 2 sponge filters running 24/7.... temp is usually 70-71 with no heater. I did add epsom salts to the initial tank water on setup but none since. There are several plastic aquarium plants in the tank but rather than hide behind them they, more often than not, perch on them below the water line.

I have a feeling that there are going to be several vastly different methods in raising N kaiseri and perhaps the same for breeding them, especially subsequent generations of captive bred individuals. I would love to "hear" from others on their successful breeding techniques for N. kaiseri as we obviously are in the infancy of knowing what will work.
PS: I had no idea of the CITES issue when I bought my kaiseri but I guess, based on the other thread, knowing what techinques successfully work is of obvious importance.

Truth be told, this is not a beginner species.They are notoriously difficult to care for. While visually appealing, as many caudates go these guys do not make good captive pets.

Captive breedings are few and far between. Often among hobbyists they are "accidental" and are not repeated with any success. The tendency of hobbyists to NOT keep accurate records of their pets and their successes only worsens the situation. (Two of my pairs never bred before with their previous owner, I got very lucky in gaining a small measure of success in a matter of a few short weeks!)

Truth be told, I got bored with commonly kept species. There are plenty of people focusing on those and I felt my time and resources are better spent on the uncommon.

I do tend to go overboard in my experimentations, as many folks here can attest to, but I do this strictly because of the lack of useful, validated information on this particular animal. Here in the US in particular a good many N. kaiseri are doomed to an early death because of inconclusive care information. The more data I can accrue on my own, the less I have to rely on what are often unvalidated and inconclusive results from various areas about the web. As you know, seeing is believing...

While I do make posts like the previous one from time to time on a few species, I still rely on my old fashioned accounting ledgers to keep and record daily information. A book never crashes and is very hard to delete. Often times the web is so full of opinion and here-say it is impossible to find the facts through the garbage.

I would love to have a group of folks that have the means and are willing to put forth the effort in collecting and trading information.

Everyone that has these: please keep notes on your experiences with N. kaiseri. (and contact me via PM if you would like to exchange data!)

jackj921 said:

Wow!!! My initial novice reaction is that that seems awfully complicated. I would love to hear about the breeding/housing setups of others who are sucessfully keeping these newts. Are they having success with radically different approaches than the one you outlined?

I bought my N kaiseri a few months back specifically because they are colorful, will eat frozen tropical fish foods, and can tolerate temperatures in the mid 70s, which is the temperature of the room the dart frogs, parrots and tropical fish are also in. This is my first venture into newts after a lifetime of tropical fish and a few years with frogs. The information I have located on N kaiseri is certainly scant and often contradictory. The fellow I bought mine from, I believe keeps and breeds his totally aquatic and that is the way I have kept my 4 6-month juvies. My 20h tank has florescent lights on 10 hours a day and I often see the newts up front during the day looking for frozen bloodworms or floating live wingless fruitflies. They have not gone back on land once after the first day as far as I can see though there is a floating log in the tank. I am using salt water aquarium sand for the floor with several small river stones, and 2 sponge filters running 24/7.... temp is usually 70-71 with no heater. I did add epsom salts to the initial tank water on setup but none since. There are several plastic aquarium plants in the tank but rather than hide behind them they, more often than not, perch on them below the water line.

I have a feeling that there are going to be several vastly different methods in raising N kaiseri and perhaps the same for breeding them, especially subsequent generations of captive bred individuals. I would love to "hear" from others on their successful breeding techniques for N. kaiseri as we obviously are in the infancy of knowing what will work.
PS: I had no idea of the CITES issue when I bought my kaiseri but I guess, based on the other thread, knowing what techinques successfully work is of obvious importance.

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Please keep in mind fish food is totally unsuitable for caudates. There is a big difference between foods for optimum health and foods that sustain life. Have you had a look at the Caudata Culture article on this species?

I would love to have a group of folks that have the means and are willing to put forth the effort in collecting and trading information.

Everyone that has these: please keep notes on your experiences with N. kaiseri. (and contact me via PM if you would like to exchange data!)

I think your comments above are really what I was trying to address. So little data is currently available about the "correct" foods, housing, lighting, setup, breeding etc etc that perhaps it is best at this time, for this species, for others to not totally follow what others are doing and strike out with their own ideas and approaches in these aspects of keeping N kaiseri. After a sufficient period of time and accumulated shared data, it will be clear what works best and what does not.

I guess the argument can be made that the supposed rarity of this species makes "experimenting" with various approaches in keeping kaiseri not a good idea. But because something works with alpine newts, is it the best for kaiseri?

I have years of tropical fish experience. I can remember back when discus were "rare", over 200 bucks each and never successfully bred. Today they come in all colors and can be kept and bred by almost anyone willing to devote a minimum of effort to their needs. It took time, effort and a certain amount of experimentation to get from there to here in 60 years. What worked for guppies did not work for discus 60 years ago and does not work today.

As for fish foods, I am using frozen and freeze dried blood worms, freeze dried tubifex, live vitamin dusted FF also used for the dart frogs, and newt bits. Again, do we REALLY know what is best for N kaiseri-have we enough data to reach definitive conclusions. Your method of keeping them is quite different from the caudata species data sheet in certain aspects and the internet contains many types of contradictory information. My parrots today eat pellets(90% of their food), chicken and chicken bones, vegetables and fruit probably none of which are endemic to their New Guinea origin. 40 years ago people were feeding these same parrots almost exclusively seeds which they thought at that time,( incorrectly,) duplicated their required diet.

I certainly would love to participate in the accumulation and trading of data on N kaiseri. The benefit is obvious...the easier kaiseri can be kept and bred, the quicker the pressure is relieved to gather WC specimens.

SludgeMunkey said:

Truth be told, this is not a beginner species.They are notoriously difficult to care for. While visually appealing, as many caudates go these guys do not make good captive pets.

Captive breedings are few and far between. Often among hobbyists they are "accidental" and are not repeated with any success.

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What makes them difficult to care for? I know that the w.c. imports don't do well, but a lot of people say that c.b. kaiseri are just as hardy as any of the Triturus species.

These days captive breedings of this species are becoming more common and there should soon be an explosion in the c.b. population.

SludgeMunkey said:

.They are notoriously difficult to care for.

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In what I see with my animals and hear from other keepers kaiseri is a very tolerant hardy species, so I'm somewhat confused in the meaning of "notoriously difficult".

I'm talking about CB kaiseri btw. WC kaiseri is indeed known to have troubles to keep alive.

I like you experimentations though and I'm curious how this will develop further on.

gr.

Jake said:

What makes them difficult to care for? I know that the w.c. imports don't do well, but a lot of people say that c.b. kaiseri are just as hardy as any of the Triturus species.

These days captive breedings of this species are becoming more common and there should soon be an explosion in the c.b. population.

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That is my question too. So far I have found mine to all be excellent captives, if a bit picky about what they will eat. From the very little I have found on the web I guess I am one of the lucky ones.

I hope others are working on the CB population of these too. I'm hoping I can do my part in that order too.

In my experience what makes kaiseri stand out from other species is their extreme shyness and photophobia. Some people have suggested that the white markings on them are actually a result of a life adapted to the dark. The cb animals I have are very hardy, good feeders and no more difficult to keep than other newt species, although their nervous temperament would make me class them as poor captives. As with nearly all newt species, they become much bolder during the aquatic phase and I can understand why many keepers choose to keep them mainly aquatic.

I'm going to move mine to a semi aquatic enclosure this weekend so we shall see. At just over 2 years old I'm hopeful they may attempt to breed for the first time. They've been at ~10C for over a month now and had a good spell of 15C before that.

SludgeMunkey said:

That is my question too. So far I have found mine to all be excellent captives, if a bit picky about what they will eat. From the very little I have found on the web I guess I am one of the lucky ones.

I hope others are working on the CB population of these too. I'm hoping I can do my part in that order too.

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With such a paucity of reliable information available on the web, perhaps making fairly bold statements such as "Truth be told, this is not a beginner species.They are notoriously difficult to care for. While visually appealing, as many caudates go these guys do not make good captive pets" .... should be guarded against? Statements like these without reference to cb vs wc perhaps continue to add to the misconception available on the web re the species. Just a thought.

Best of luck with your captive breeding efforts!

Jan said:

With such a paucity of reliable information available on the web, perhaps making fairly bold statements such as "Truth be told, this is not a beginner species.They are notoriously difficult to care for. While visually appealing, as many caudates go these guys do not make good captive pets" .... should be guarded against? Statements like these without reference to cb vs wc perhaps continue to add to the misconception available on the web re the species. Just a thought.

Best of luck with your captive breeding efforts!

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Agreed Jan...I stand corrected...thank the FSM you are back to keep my over-excitable temperament in check!


Anyway, here is the results of the experimentation:



These eggs are from one of the pairs that has a "gray" origin. (I say gray only as I am unable to prove with certainty their original source.)