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Tylotoriton V. :Growth trouble or gender difference?

baimoth

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Hello
I purchased 2 Verrucosus light variants 2 months ago in an aquarium store which had no idea of newts. They were very thin and kept in a very poor conditioned tank.
They were fully terrestrial ,but I decided to make them fat first, then put them in the water. It's been a week since I got rid of the land part. The big one just adapted to the aquatic environment yesterday and the small one is still working on it. It is still floating, but eats well and tries to to put his head into water as much as possible.

The size and appearance of the two were quite different as you can see in the pictures. At first, I thought they look different just because of the sex, but now I have different idea.
What concerns me is that it seems the small one had some kind of growth trouble. His jaw power is too weak to snap the food. He used to always lower his head down on the ground.
it doesn't look like his cloaca hasn't even developed yet, assuming the two are same ages.
I want to hear some opinions from you people.

Sorry about the poor grammar and word choices.
 

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mr cyclone

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Continue to feed them,and stop handling them.they will no doubt be stressed, to me their cloaca looks fine ,keep feeding them and offer them sufficient places to hide , i look forward to more photos in a month or two
 

Chinadog

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I was given some T. verrucosus by a friend last year. All were larvae apart from one that morphed at a very small (30mm) size. Although mine are the dark variant the small morph looked a lot like the one you have there and really struggled for a while, It became thinner and thinner up to a point where I almost gave up, but it did recover and is now the only male in my group of adults, so don't give up hope!
I've since spoken to a few T. verr owners and it does seem that males can often be much slower to grow than females, to a point where all the young that make it to maturity are female. Its just anecdotal and there are many contradictions regarding the care and raising of this species, probably due to differing conditions across their huge distribution range, but it seems more than coincidence.
 

baimoth

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Updates.

The small one finally fully adapted to aquatic! He still likes to float, but he occasionally dives and eager to find foods on the bottom when I feed. His/her cloaca is flat though.

NaverBlog_20151022_011243_09.jpg


NaverBlog_20151022_011255_14.jpg


NaverBlog_20151022_011257_18.jpg
 

baimoth

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Need help guys. The big one aggressively fanned to the other one which was an attempt of courtship. Of course, the other male/female didn't respond.

2 days later, the big one wouldn't go into water and became lethargic. At first I thought he was on impaction, but that idea went away after he took a large poop. He doesn't show any external injury or infection.

Is it possible to be lethargic and goes to land part after courtship attempt? Or is it a internal disease which I must take care of?
 

Chinadog

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I haven't seen aggression between my ones, they do sometimes bite each other by mistake at feeding time, but other than that they get along just fine.
The article in Caudata Culture says the lighter coloured strains are often more terrestrial than the dark ones like mine. Has anything changed in their tank, a drop in temperature, or shorter day length, maybe?

http://www.caudata.org/cc/species/Tylototriton/T_verrucosus.shtml
 

baimoth

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Oh, I meant aggressively to imply that he fanned his tail so hard for the courtship.:tongue:
Well, the temperature went decrease to 17 celcius during the night for several days, but the other is still in the water. I suspect of internal infection or disease now. He is still lethargic and greatly lost his appetite. I don't know what to do since I couldn't diagnose the problem. All I did is I soaked him in Furan-2 and erythromycin diffused water .
 

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Rupert

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Oh, I meant aggressively to imply that he fanned his tail so hard for the courtship.:tongue:
Well, the temperature went decrease to 17 celcius during the night for several days, but the other is still in the water. I suspect of internal infection or disease now. He is still lethargic and greatly lost his appetite. I don't know what to do since I couldn't diagnose the problem. All I did is I soaked him in Furan-2 and erythromycin diffused water .

The light-skinned patch on his abdomen in the picture.... is that normal(as in, is that apparent on the other side of the abdomen)? Or is it an irregularity?
 

Chinadog

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The light-skinned patch on his abdomen in the picture.... is that normal(as in, is that apparent on the other side of the abdomen)? Or is it an irregularity?

The juveniles I have nearly always have irregular light splodges around their throats and bellies. I will try and get a picture of it later on at worm time.
 
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