Sorry to interrupt and change subjects, but Newtility...that commentary about receiving animals from Bilbao just felt wrong. By receiving a pure strain you mean you received locally collected T.marmoratus??? If so, you should know that what you did was ilegal and very much immoral.
I was waiting for this statement, really. Immoral! What a great word! Moral equals to ethics like civilization to culture. The stock is from that locality but not the actual specimen, of course. But all you moralists, which species do you keep yourself? Many if not most of the actually maintained species of caudates come from stock not collected under any law or license. Eradicate all your kaiseri immediately! And all pachytriton, Paramesotriton, even Cynops etc. as all these are from highly doubtful imports or sources. The newts from China are restricted - all of them! But the are available through the trade - illegally. And who buys them? many people around the world and I bet there is a huge number of these acid moralists amongst them.
Meanwhile many species are under severe threat of eradication but not a single one from collecting for trade or private purposes. All these "environmentalists" and "animal rights" people have been talking lies over the past decades, the proof is evident for all of them from Greenpeace to the WWF. They are fundraising organizations- nothing else. And what do they do with the billions they receive? First of all propagande to justify their existence. The rest is dispersed to alibi actions like "preserving the Sibirian Tiger" and the dumm Great Panda, a species bringing itself to the edge of extinction by overspecialization and low reproduction rate. But not a penny for any caudate. Why? Caudates don´t have a lobby, one can not show what a great person he/she is by saving "an ugly, slimy crawling creature". And you are talking about morals? Please, first clean your tanks from all animals even possibly from not legal origine. Then start thinking about sense and nonsense in species protection. And why not start with Ambystoma andersoni? They will get extinct very soon but we have them by the numbers in solid stock and won´t let them vanish at least from captive stock. But they have been collected and exported illegally. OK, they are still eaten by the local people but that is way better than to collect 8 specimen for establishing breeding stock, isn´t it? The Axolotl has just recently been declared extinct - despite there is a "breeding project" in Mexico. Obviously not very successful. There are many Ambystoma under extreme threat in Mexico but the government prefers to have them going extinct rather than granting breeders to stock them up. I had been invited to a recovery project for a fish species in Mexico but rejected as they only wanted to find it back with help from experienced hobbyists without letting us stock them. Mexico probably is the country with the most endemic species under threat, all of them "under protection" but zero efforts taken to do so. Every day endemic species fade away forever. One species even by a professor who collected the very last living specimen and preserved them in alcohol rather than breeding them. Die in dignity - don´t moralists like to put phrases like this? BTW there was the first evacuation of dartfrogs from Panama as that government has realized they will lose them anyway but it is better to preserve them in captivity. Breeders around the world, seriously working of course, do a highly valuable work to preserve threatened and endangered animals. A work zoos can´t do from their experience and assets. But, hurray, there are fat funds available now and hence zoos around the world start "being interested" in amphibians. Great, now they can make money from amphibians and not only from tigers, elephants etc. That´s the moral of them. And they generally refuse to hand out specimen to private persons (with very few exceptions) but they seek "cooperation" with experienced breeders to learn from them (e.g. Amphibian Ark). After they have soaked out the knowledge like a vampire they will turn their backs to us hobbyists again. What an ethical attitude! To all non-moralists in this world: Let´s do what we can to stock as many species as possible to safe as many as possible from going forever. That´s not moral but ethical.