Marmoratus NOT Breeding or Laying

Hi All

I recently acquired a group of 10 fully sized adult marbled newts, 6 males and 4 females, the males are all crested and the females plump with eggs...However unlike my alpines which are constantly mating, courting and egg laying, these marbled have shown no sign of courting, the males like to leave the water to lay on cork bark and the females have not laid 1 single egg in 2 weeks. I have split them up so 1 group is being kept in outside temps (approx. 9 degrees centigrade) and the other group indoors, to see if warmer temp will kickstart them as it did with my alpines. Please any advice/answers or are these particularly fussy about breeding in captivity??? Also will the females ingest the eggs if they do not get a decent window to lay their eggs????

Lee

Hi Lee, marbled newts are not particularly difficult to breed. One of the prerequisites is that they've had a good winter cooling i.e. 10C or below for a number of weeks or even months. This will bring them into breeding condition and courting/egg laying normally occurs towards the end of the cool down or as it starts to warms up.

It sounds to me as if your's are already in breeding condition - males with crests and plump females, but depending on the extent of their cooling it may not lead to a successful breeding. With a group of 10 I would expect at least one pair to get it together.

Mine started courting in January and are still laying eggs. I'm still observing tail fanning although not as much. In my experience certain individuals can be very reluctant to enter the water, irrelevant of seasonal conditions imposed. In my case I would say that only 50% of the group will take part in breeding activity in a given year.

Males will court females at all times of the day and night so don't assume it's not taking place just because you haven't observed it.

I found with my marms and carnifex that if they did not have the right type of leaves to lay there eggs on they would not lay at all. Try leaves that are around a 10p in size such as foget me nots or bell flower and be patient mine do not start till april/may time.

What is it that you have in their environment to lay on? I noticed that my karelinii would only lay on certain plants while my cristatus and dobrogicus will lay on anything introduced into the tank (java moss, bacopa, and plastic laying strips not in the tank during the winter months).

I hope they lay for you soon. They are beautiful newts!

Hi

thanks for replies

The plants are Elodea densa, a large leafed aquarium plant (leaves approc 25-30mm wide), Java moss and Wickia floating, again my alpines are readily laying in all these plants, especially the floating wickia, but marbleds nothing, if Billy's animals domt breed till april/may then i may as well put em all back into outside aquaria and let nature warm em up, it is only 8.5degrees centigrade water temp at mo.

Lee