Cynops ensicauda popei/C. orientalis morphs.

Hi Justin,

It had reverted to terrestrial mode and I had to get to tranfer back.

Ed

It has now been a little over 2 weeks. The orientalis morph is perfectly at home in the water...eating constantly and plump. The 2 ensicauda(not counting the one which appears unwell) so far refuse to go in the water for longer than a few minutes(they've been in for about 1.5 weeks). At what point do you give up for the time being? The ones terrestrial are growing and many of them are quite plump.

when they start looking like they are getting thin... I have waited as long as three weeks before offering them food.

Ed

I've given up on this experiment, at least for now, as I found 10 morphs dead in the water today after noticing fewer on the sides of the glass. The water level is about 1.5 cm and mostly filled with java moss, so I find their drownings odd (not to mention disconcerting). Keeping the survivors in a dangerous environment like this for possibly weeks until they get hungry enough to enter the water is way too risky a gamble to proceed with. So I'll be raising them on land until I figure out what I might have been doing wrong .

The others in the separate tank that seem to have taken to water on their own are doing fine.

Hi, I've read all your posts on getting juvies faster to the water. In my opinion it's a risky business where the animals can drown if their not old enough. I have nine chenggongensis juveniles that are 1 year old now, 4 of them entered the water, five of them are still on land. I keep them in a half land half water setup with lots and lots of plants and floating wood so they can easily come out of the water. This setups works very well for me, when the juveniles are ready to enter the water they are capable of doing so and if they want to stay on land for a while, there is also plenty of hiding place and dry and wet spots.

Tim,

What is the temperature at which you are keeping the metamorphs? The warmer the temperature (as I believe Alan noted in a different thread) will make it much harder to switch them over. With the C. cyanurus if the temp is below 68 F, I often have them go terrestrial for less than a week (and some that never do so) while if the temps get above 68 F they really do not want to be in the water. This pattern was repeated with the pyrrogaster and I am seeing something similar with the popei.

Ed

Ed, the room temperature is set at 21 C all year long. As the tank in question is on the floor, it is in the upper teens.

Have you posted a photo before of your getting-the-metamorphs-to-become-aquatic setup? I was using a standard 10-gallon tank during my ill-fated experiment.

There was only one live metamorph in the water (aside from the couple of dozen on land). With this one, I have moved it into a shoebox-sized plastic storage container with java moss packed tightly on both sides and shallow water in the middle. It is on land now, however.

Miriam, how do you feed your morphs on land in your half-water, half-land setup? I'd like to try that, but my worry is that in such an environment, many of the pinhead crickets I use for food would drown (and they are quite expensive to obtain...).

I don't dismiss the method used by Ed though, as it has evidently worked for him with minimal mortality. I just can't get it to work for me. I must have been doing something wrong...


(Message edited by TJ on June 02, 2006)

I feed mine on land with tubifex, musquitolarvae and pieces of earthworms on a wet paper that I change every day.

I've given up on one of the ensicauda morphs and it is now back in with the rest. I think it might be too warm to convert them to semiaquatic now...might have to wait till fall.

Hello,

here is a pic how I convert my metamorphosed Cynops pyrrhogaster sasayamae back to the aquatic phase.

When I start to convert them after the terrestrial phase i begin with a water high of 1-2 cm.
And one week to the next I make it higher and higher in small steps.

Greetings Ingo Veltum

Neat setup Ingo!

Ensicauda are all back to terrestrial now...the bigger orientalis is more terrestrial, but the smaller one in the first set of photos is aquatic. Odd to me as he/she is maybe 1-2 months out of water and converted over with little fuss at all. Might have been he/she was a bit thin to start with so immediately went back to the water.

Hello,

the advantage of this variable frame is, that the distance between the frame and the water surface is always the same, independently of the water high.
And the newts staying always in contact with the water, so they convert easily.

Greetings Ingo V.

Hi Tim,

I don't know if I have posted on in the past but the method I use/used is very similar to the picture posted by Ingo except I use a plastic shoebox or sweater box depending on how many babies I have at the moment.

Ed