Marbled Salamander care question

I have a Marbled Salamander and am hoping others can give me some tips on its care. The substrate is Zoo Med Creature soil and I have put pillow moss in there that it likes to hide under. It eats very well for me and I have been feeding it 3 crickets once a week but I'm worried I'm not feeding it enough. I tried to feed it red wigglers that I cut up, but it refused them. I got some black soldier fly larvae & waxworms this week to add some variety to its diet. It also never comes out from underneath the moss. It seems to stay in the exact same spot, never moving until I feed it. Is this normal? It hasn't tried to burrow into the soil at all either. Any help would be much appreciated, thanks!

https://www.caudata.org/cc/species/Ambystoma/A_opacum.shtml

Check out this care guide. The care guides and FAQs on this are quite helpful. Also, the red wigglers are refused quite often due to a foul odor from a liquid when they're chopped up.

https://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/worms.shtml

As opposed to moss, I would probably use cork bark as a hide because moss can be acidic. I personally don't know much about pillow moss since I don't use it. Also, it is typical for salamanders like marbled salamanders to hide. They are known as mole salamanders. They spend a lot of time underground in the wild. I would say it's typical for a lot of newts and salamanders to hide where they feel secure as opposed to wandering out in the open.

I have two, in the same enclosure. I keep mine on coco fiber. put small 12 crickets their tank every Monday and Friday and they seem to eat them all between the two of them. I do dust the crickets with calcium powder each time I feed for three weeks. The last week of the month i use multivitamin powder. I only keep my supplement for 6 months and then replace. My supplement are kept in the fridge. My Marbled Salamanders never come out either. Every now and then I go and look for them to make sure they are healthy lol. One of mine burrows and the other just hangs out under cork bark. I don't use moss, only cork bark and a very shallow water dish that I fill up ever night. I also keep spring tails and I try to keep isopods in their tank, however im pretty sure they eat all the isopods lol.

Hope this helps!

Both of your suggestions help, thank you. I knew it would likely hide and/or burrow and I wouldn't see it much, which is fine by me as long as it's happy. I was just worried that it doesn't seem to move at all. I have added isopods and springtails to its enclosure already and had planned to redo it to add some live plants, so I'll get rid of the moss and put some cork bark in with it.

I have three girls, two adults in together and a smaller one in on her own. Both enclosures are set up bio with a drainage layer and a lot of Pro Rep Forest Soil, numerous partially buried cork bark half tunnels, pieces of bark and driftwood pieces to burrow around - they seem to like doing this and a lot of their tunnel networks are around solid objects. They are covered with live moss and pincushion moss. Both tanks have small E. Hortensis in there (organic farmed) and I add one or two loaded crickets per animal if there is no live food in the tanks, they seem to disappear pretty quickly. Personally I don't like coco choir as it sticks to the animal and doesn't look as nice.

I have noticed the older they get the more reclusive they seem to be, when I originally got my first girl (as a juvenile) she took up permanent residence in one tunnel and would come out to eat, either crickets I dropped in front of her or ones fed from tongs. She was very bold and would walk to the front of the hide if she knew I was there. Now she will ignore food I offer and is content to stay in a burrow and hunt at night of her own accord. She is still a bit chubby so I have no worries, in fact I'm glad as she was leading a pretty sedentary lifestyle being served food right to her front door! The other adult female I got as an adult and is more secretive, she has a deep burrow underneath some moss and seems to stay there, when I go to bed (they are in my room) her head will be poking out of the moss waiting for bugs to walk past.

The juvenile girl I have (about 8-9cm head to tip of tail) wanders freely within minutes of the lights going off, she can be found roaming all over the enclosure and is sometimes out during the daytime. Don't see this one hunt or eat as much but she definitely seems bolder, I don't know if they become more secretive with age but my animals definitely seem to be like this. She has dug a small burrow which begins at a piece of wood and terminates underneath her favourite cork tunnel, she usually hides at either entrance.

So the brief summary is that as long as they have an environment they feel safe in, can have a dig if they want to (they are fossorial and I like natural behaviour) and are eating bugs then I wouldn't worry. They do have a reputation as reclusive animals which is true to an extent, a lot of people report going months without seeing them but when I go to bed a lot of the time I will see two heads poking out in one enclosure and one little roaming salamander in the other so YMMV. Sounds like yours has a good home so I wouldn't worry, finding out where their little tunnel networks are and how they have made a home for themselves in the habitat you provided makes them really rewarding IMO.

In fact just as an example I took a couple of pics. Here's the youngster having a wander:
https://i.ibb.co/JnJdV15/Adult.jpg
And here's my original female in a hide:
https://i.ibb.co/HDZTQW3/Juvenile.jpg
The other adult is deep in a burrow, so three different animals exhibiting different preferences.

Thank you, that makes me feel even better. That also makes me think I should maybe make it work for its food a bit more. I usually just lift up the moss and feed it. It was given to me by someone, and I think probably WC, but even though they are native to my area I didn't want to release it back into the environment not knowing its history. I've had it for months now though, and it has been eating like a champ so I'll think I'll start making it work a little harder for its food. (I hate calling it "it" but I have no idea if it's male or female.)

Mine became overweight because I was overfeeding her (it's fun to watch them eat, they always look so happy!) and was also giving her no reason to actively hunt by hand feeding. If you just put bugs in as normal everything should be ok.


Males are usually have a brighter white pattern with longer tails, females have more greyish markings and the tail can be stumpy. Young animals can also have short tails and obviously there's a bit of variation from animal to animal. Under a camera flash females can look very bright, I bought my last two thinking they were male.
https://www.alamy.com/breeding-pair-of-marbled-salamanders-ambystoma-opacum-image159686798.html

Can you tell from this picture? I think it looks a little more silver in person, but it's so slight I'm not sure.

I'd probably err on the side of it being male if those colours are accurate although it does look to have slightly grey markings, no doubt somebody more knowledgeable will be able to confirm. Nice markings though, almost banding.

I was hoping to try and breed these but ended up buying females due to liberal use of flash photography by the pet shop I got them from, they also carefully disguised the missing toes on the smaller one. Not that I wouldn't have bought them anyway, can't say no to those faces.