Sad News - The Smaller One Died.

I woke up this morning to find the smaller Chinensis I had purchased dead in the quarantine tank after a month or so of proper care. All the water testing was normal, and she seemed to have been getting better. The wound she had formerly acquired was healing well and she was a lot more mobile.

Her food intake had became extremely scarce and she was rejecting everything I had attempted to give her in the last couple of days.

She was rubbing her skin against the rocks last night when I went to bed, and she looked pale so I assumed she was going shed soon.

I put a small amount of bloodworm's in her tank overnight hoping she would eat. But no luck, instead I found her dead. She looked like she was swimming or struggling to go for air.

I'm not sure if it's starvation or drowning. The first sounds more realistic to me. Perhaps an internal infection or something from the wound that affected her eating? I dunno, I'm no newt. But yeah. It sucks, the girlfriend is in shambles.

As i´m sure you know, they are WC, and if it had a wound, who knows what else it might have been suffering of as a consequence of the stress and neglect. Starvation is unlikely, since newts can go for a very long time without food, and a starving newt is usually very obvious.

I´m really sorry it died..it´s certainly an unpleasent experience :S

In the future, i hope you avoid WC newts...you´ve seen what happens.

I would have definately prefered captive bred but I've heard it's highly unlikely to find bred Chinensis.

My main reason for purchasing them was the wife, the second was "rescuing" them from poor conditions at the local petshop.

When I had initially gotten the two, all was fine until the smaller one (which died) attacked the larger so I was forced to seperate them. After about 2 days apart, I changed the tank around after removing them both and then re-introduced them hoping they would be okay.

Around a week and I have later, I noticed the smaller one hiding alot behind the filter in one corner and not really eating much, a complete change in demeanor so I was concerned that maybe they had gotten into it again and she was the victim this time.

I tried another re-arrangement and to no avail, she was then staying out of the water and about a week later, she had developed a white bump on her left side just above her leg. I figured and infected wound and removed her to place her into a quarantine tank (10gallons) with all the proper care. Water changes, etc.

About a month and a half have gone by and her wound was completely cleared up, she was showing great signs of coming back. Swimming around alot more, taking a little more food than before and "chasing me" when I'm near the tank.

Then I go to sleep, wake up and find the smaller one dead.

Well it´s definitely very hard to find CB P.chinensis...i just don´t think that justifies participating in the whole mass collection thing...

Anyway, most of us start the same way, i´m just hoping you learn from the experience.

So sorry to hear the news!

i am so sorry to hear about your newt. it's always sad when a little newt-friend dies. unfortunately, getting newts is kinda hard and loads, especially P.chinensis, are wild caught. Maybe you could save other newts, and breed them so that others don't have to get WCs? I am trying to convince my folks to let me breed axies, because some people buy WC axies that get transported from me-hi-co.

Hope you have more luck in the future.

No, they don´t. All comercially available axolotls are CB.
I can´t imagine anyone trying to make illegally captured axolotls available commercially...not with the amount of CB ones and the low prices they reach...
There might be some illegal collection for local purposes left, but certainly not a world wide market (there couldn´t be).

As for the chinensis, there MUST be someone, somewhere in the US that has had breeding success with them, if not, it´s only a matter of time.

Ah, that´s right. Well there you have it, CB P.chinensis available xD

Aw. So sorry to hear about your little one, hopefully you guys have better luck with the remaining newt! Take care,

Alyssa

For future reference, is there any ways to force feed a newt? lol.

I went against myself when I was at Big Als looking for plants the other day. They had two "Paddletails" for sale in a Cricket keeper with about 3" of water and a rock with no hides. I simply ripped into an employee and left. lol.

Yeah, but not a lot of people recommend it. If you push too hard on the newts mouth, or open it too wide, you could easily break the jaw (ah!).

The way I did it with a small Eastern newt was holding him in my left hand while strategically sliding my thumb nail in his mouth with the right. You'll be using both hands at this point so a second person is needed to put the food inside (forceps or tweezers help) while the mouth is still open.

This method worked very well as far as getting food in his mouth, but definitely didn't ensure survival by any means. After all the hype and convincing a friend to assist me (she wasn't exactly willing to work with chopped up worms. reminder: were from LA) it was sad to watch him try and swallow it down with little to no success. So the main thing to consider when force feeding is if its ultimately worth the extra stress you put on the newt or not.

(depressing much?)

Force feeding is a terrible idea...really terrible. In order to work at all you have to literally puss the food inside and force it to swallow it, otherwise it will spit it out as soon as you release it. The amount of stress the process causes is enormous, and will only prolong the problem, so the animal will continue to starve.

There are very few situations in which force feeding is not a completely insane idea, and personallyi think none of them include small newts.

Once i tried to force feed my skinny hongkongensis male (RIP), but the problem was "how the hell could i open it's jaw?" so i gave it up.

Yahilles said:

the problem was "how the hell could i open it's jaw?"

Click to expand...

All you do is slide your nail in its mouth very carefully. Acrylic nails work wonders in this situation. Its risky though, and if not done the right way could do more harm than good with their skin being so delicate and bones so tiny and brittle.