Another H. orientalis thread

Hello Chinadog,
besides the issues presented, he seems and acts normal. And before this, he was eating really well, so I think it might be a good shot to try the amputation, taking this facts into consideration.

I can't blame you for wanting to try and save him, its an awful long way back from where he is at the moment though.

A quick update.
Unfortunely the one with the leg problem died.
When I amputated it, he didn't react at all and tere was no blood too. So I tink the amputation went well.
I was thinking about letting him sit in the fridge for one week, so he was suposed to be removed yesterday, which is when I get home from college. My sister kept changing his water daily, with clean water that was also kept in the fridge for this porpuse.

On thursday however, my sister sent me this photo.


That was far too big for me to think it was feces. I thought it might be skin or regurgitation of some sort.
Yesterday when I was going to change his water he wasn't moving. I left him outised of the fridge till today to see if anything would change, but nothing.
I've putted him in a small jar with 96% alcohol, maybe in the future I might try to analyze the bump he had on his back.

I'll update in the future when all of them are in the tank. Hopefully it won't take long.

So sorry

A bit of a update...
The three remaining seem to be doing fine, and eat fairly well. I still have 2 of them who don't go to the water by their own, and as soon as they have a chance to be on land, they do. The third one, the one that used to spent it's time on water, as been with a unusual behavior that I'm still trying to figure out.

To put it into context, I've changed their aquarium to one a bit smaller but still has about 25 liters worth of water. I've not placed the elodeas in this tank mainly because I think I don't have enough watts/liter to have them on, in the last tank they were holding on but still decaying in a lot of places.
When I placed the newt that used to be in water, she wanders about in the tank, normally, but after some time, maybe a hour or more she will go to the platform. Which isn't a big deal. After some time she will go to the water again, and then triesto escape the water going against the glass and swimming upright. She eventually will climb to the glass. I have no idea why... at first I thought it might be due to the lack of floating plants, so I improvised and made some plastic plants to serve the same effect. But she still behaves the same. I've tried placing her in the tank for 3 weeks now (once every week) with the same results. She's now in a little tub with water and a piece of cork and java moss with the other 2 newts. They do fine as well in there, but she will not behave the same while in there. She will go to the water (shallow but enough to cover her) and won't try to escape. She's the easiest one to feed from all three, and also eats a lot.



In this picture the tank doesn't have the floating platform, but whenever I tried to place her there a floating platform was available.

The tank is well ventilated and I even got a little USB fan to cool the water. In the picture the temperature is 23.4ºC and it was about half a hour after I turned the fan on, it was 24ºC.

My only guess is water quality (high levels of ammonia?), I'll need to buy a test from somewhere where they don't cost close to 20€ and figure that out.

Any advice or opinions will be appreciated.
Cheers

PS: Does the picture appears way to big for you guys or it resizes for your screen?

I'm afraid you might not like this, but you are really not providing any of the conditions they need. 25 litres is round about 5 gallons, that's half the minimum recommended volume of 10 gallons. In a tank as small as that temperature and waste levels can be very unstable, especially if its newly set up and that will not help the newts de stress and adapt at all
The water should be crammed with live plants to begin with, so many that you can't see from one side of the tank to the other. Chinese firebellies that have gone into terrestrial mode can easily drown, so they won't willingly enter open water and will panic and freak out if you force them to swim. When these types of aquatic newts that are constantly trying to escape its because the conditions are intolerable for them and they are attempting to abandon the tank and seek out somewhere better.
All they need is a minimum 10 gallon tank that's rammed with plants and clean cold water, any plants will do but fast growing ones are best because they suck up more waste and will help the tank cycle.
You should at least have test kits for ammonia and nitrite, trying to add animals to an un cycled tank without any idea what the water parameters are is crazy and cruel to the newts involved. They are telling you they can't tolerate the conditions by refusing to get wet and trying to escape all the time, if you can't provide them with a tank that meets their basic needs you should let them go to someone who can.

http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/cyclingEDK.shtml

http://www.caudata.org/cc/species/Cynops/C_orientalis.shtml

Thanks for the reply chinadog, as I said i've cycled the tank for at least 4 weeks now, but you are right I should test the water either way.
I forgot to add that before this setup, I had it with bare bottom, and the referred newt was doing well in it, but for some reason, the bottom was collecting a lot of debree (I'm guessing it was plant debree of some sort) so I went and remade the whole tank with silica sand in the bottom, it was boiled several times and cleaned, so I doubt the sand could be the issue here.

Also I want to add, I've never forced them to swim! If I place the terrestial newts in water it's for a brief moment (to clean their setup) and very shallow water either way. The newt I'm referring in the post was already aquatic for several time, in the original tank. I never force the animals to be aquatic if they don't want to.
The water temperature right now is room temperature. That's why I managed to get the USB fan to keep it even colder for the warmer periods (it can decrease to 21ºC in days where it used to be 24ºC).

You've given me something to think on about... I'll heavily think about rehoming them back to a bigger tank... I have this issue where I try to optimize the space I have, and...well, I shouldn't.

I have several tanks laying around, and I'll rethink my strategy in a way that makes them happy. I'll try to make a tank mainly planted with vallisnerias and stacked rocks with silica sand substrate....that might work.

Again, I just want to emphasize that I don't want to pass the impression that I force the animals to be in water, or I keep them in stressed circumstances. As soon I see a animal in distress, I move it to a place where it feels better.

Thanks for the harsh criticism, I suppose I was needing it to destroy my tunnel vision approach.

I'll keep you guys updated.

Late, late (late) update :happy:
The one I talk about being in bad shape died, the other 3 are doing very well so far. I love them.

https://imgur.com/a/3HNZZNG (How am I supposed to link pictures now?)