Belly color triturus

Hi,
why the trituruses carnifexes in nature have the completely red belly while me also that raise them in a pond to the open one they are born me with the yellow belly?
thank you

The colour comes from carotenoids in their diet.

They will become more red if you feed them carotenoid-rich foods. Daphnia and Gammarus are good examples.

You could also add carotenoids to their diet by dusting or gut-loading.

I have made some notes on carotenoids and amphibian colour at:
Carotenoids and amphibian colouration

If you rear animals in outside enclosures, you could try seeding the pond with Daphnia. With a bit of sun, they will multiply and the larvae will be able to get carotenoids from eating them.

C

Caleb your article on carotene is amazingly interesting.
As i'm french i didn't understand all of in.

Do you say waxworms ar good for adult newts belly color ?
Or do you say they are good only if we add carotene supplement to the diet of the worms ?
In each case which waxworm variety is best for adult newts and how do i have to feed them, what kind of complement do i give them (the worms)?

WilliamBlake said:

they are good only if we add carotene supplement to the diet of the worms ?

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This is correct.

WilliamBlake said:

how do i have to feed them, what kind of complement do i give them (the worms)?

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You would have to add a carotenoid source to the waxworm's food.

You could use artificial supplements, (e.g. carophyll red), or foods that are naturally high in carotenoids (e.g. spirulina, paprika, shrimp).

Thanks a lot.
Spirulina is made from cyanobacteria, the one responsible for the blue alguae problem in aquatic tanks. Do you think there is a risk to contaminate one's tank water when introducing this by feeding the newts ? (we all know this kind of alguae is very resistant...)

Absolutely none. The spirulina would have been doubly processed, once through manifacture and again by the worm´s digestive system. There´s no way you´ll get a bloom of spirulina in your tank. Even if you introduced live spirulina, it requires particular conditions to grow.
I have tried commercial carotene powders in my waxworm´s culture medium before with very decent results.

Azhael said:

I have tried commercial carotene powders in my waxworm´s culture medium before with very decent results.

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Any chance of more details? I'd be interested to know

-what product you used
-what amount you used
-what the waxworms looked like
-how many worms you fed to your amphibians (was it the majority of their diet?)
-how quickly it affected the amphibians' colour.
-how much it affected the amphibians' colour.

I'd be interested in hearing the same information from anyone else that has tried this...

Ok, let´s see. It was some time ago so excuse me if the details are not too exact.

The product i used is called Nekton Rep-Color.
I added 1gr per total medium preparation (aprox. the volume of a cup).
The waxworms did become very slightly pinkish. Just enough to be noticiable.
At the time i was using the waxworms to feed juveniles of H.orientalis mainly, and they were 1/3 of their diet for a couple of months.(They were used for other species too, but not in significant amounts)
The color of the animals was affected rather fast but i never achieved a full developement of the color. The animals had very nice red bellies (nothing to sneeze at) but not with the same strength and intensity as wild animals. (If you want i can send you a picture).

I´ve had better and faster results with the same product being used for dusting prey both with newts and Bombina orientalis. However, it was clear to me that the animals didn´t enjoy the taste of the powder, so using the product through the culture medium of the prey seemed like a better choice.

Thanks for that.

Yes, would be good to see a picture of the red bellies.

Does the Nekton-Rep Colour packaging state the carotenoid content?

I just realized, there´s a picture in the CC article "raising juvenile C.orientalis".
I lost the leaflet with the information long ago, i´m sorry. I think, but i´m not positive, the main carotenoid was canthaxanthine.