Breeding Methods

Good afternoon!

It has been some time since I gave a status update. I started off with 5 fire belly newts years ago; Figured out they were all females they were given to me years ago and when I got them the man who gave them to me said they were probably around 8-10 years old.. Since the ban, 2 of them have died of old age. I have been constantly looking for breeders, joining this website and countless of Facebook groups. In the last week I finally found someone getting out of the hobby and had 8 she wanted to give away and she lived in the same state! I jumped to that very quickly, anyways I got her to ship them yesterday and just received them and they look happy and healthy. They will be even more excited to know that they will be in a 55 gallon tank. They were previously in a 20 gallon long tank.

Anyways since I have 11 now, the breeding chances are pretty high! I am really looking forward to this but kinda am overwhelmed. There is soo much info online and soo many different methods;

I was wondering if anyone can tell me how they bred their little guys? and what was the most effective method?

There are quite a few species that have been sold as 'firebellies' over the years, but the most common are very easy to breed and need very little special conditioning once they are acclimatised. For Cynops pyrrhogaster or Hypselotriton orientalis, just give them a reduced day length through the winter and a slightly lower temperature if possible and they should do the rest naturally. Expect a few infertile eggs to begin with, but they should soon get the hang of it.

What would you recommend for Cynops Orientals? I've looked it up and there are quite a few different methods

23matt3 said:

What would you recommend for Cynops Orientals? I've looked it up and there are quite a few different methods

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23matt3 said:

What would you recommend for Cynops Orientals? I've looked it up and there are quite a few different methods

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I'm attempting to breed my pair of adults this year with no luck yet.

I shortened the day light time in the winter along with dropped tank tempertures to around 10-12 degree s Celsius

I slowly increased day light time and temperature, now the tank is at 16-18 degrees Celsius and 11 hours of daylight.

Still no luck with eggs so ill be following this thread!

Just keep them in a room where they get some natural light through a window and try to keep the period you keep the aquarium lights on shorter than the period the room gets daylight. If winters are colder where you live, the tank will get colder temps during this period especially during nighttime, unless you leave the heating on at night of course. When all other requirements of keeping them alive in good health are met you should have eggs at least once a year.

My two cynops pyrrhogaster just laid dozens if not more, eggs. I've had a breeding pair for a few years, but I've been too busy to actually try and breed them. So now that I have the time I did exactly what some did above. Their tank is in the basement and during winter hovered from 55-60 F. A few weeks ago, I lowered their water to maybe an inch from 10 inches. Turned lights off, did not feed them, and threw a blanket over their tank to block out all light(I have a few other tanks and it being a walk out basement there are windows all around). After a week of this, I took the blanket off. Now this was around the time the days were getting longer so natural sunlight was now pouring through those basement windows and into their tank. The next day I filled their tank back to about 10", turned the lights on, and gave them earthworms and bloodworms to eat. By this time temps in the basement stayed around 60 F. I saw courtship behavior (which I saw a lot anyway) but nothing else. After about 2-3 weeks I saw nothing. They are in a very heavily planted tank. So I assume this was all a failure and stopped checking.

But

Last week...not only did I find about 12 eggs but found 2-3 larvae swimming around!!! (Again numbers are questionable since the tank is jam packed with dwarf sag and Java moss.)

So.....I guess it did work. Sometimes it just happens. And when it does it's great.

Thanks for all the advice everyone!

I just was really feeling overwelmed. No videos on Youtube really about the breeding process and when you google it there are soo many methods. I even saw one of putting them in a fridge for a month without food. So thanks

23matt3 said:

Thanks for all the advice everyone!

I just was really feeling overwelmed. No videos on Youtube really about the breeding process and when you google it there are soo many methods. I even saw one of putting them in a fridge for a month without food. So thanks

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Putting them in the fridge without food is to induce hibernation I believe. It is definitely not necessary for the Chinese FBN's (H. orientalis) and I haven't heard of it being necessary for the Japanese ones either. Just let the temp drop a bit during the winter naturally, reduce the day length (which I haven't even done and I always get eggs from my orientalis), make sure everything else is well and the animals are in good health and you should get eggs pretty readily. If you want to be sure, or if your climate doesn't give you much of a temperature drop during the winter, you can look at various methods of reducing the temp artificially for a couple of months over winter. But again, it's almost definitely not necessary. I basically do nothing and still get eggs every year.

I'm a bit late to the conversation and seandelevan briefly touched on this anyway, but in addition what others have recommended it will really help if you offer high quality live foods like chopped nightcrawlers, black worms, daphnia, scuds, etc, at least in my experience. But really, these guys will breed on their own if simply offered clean cool water, plants to lay eggs on, and decent nutrition.

Best of luck!

HJ

Their tank is loaded with plants. I will take a pic when I get home from work but I currently have 11 in there and haven't even been able to count all of them at once because it is so densely planted. lol Where would you recommend i find these live foods? I cant seem to find them anywhere? Online perhaps?

Even if you're not trying to breed your animals, you should offer high quality live food items. There are a lot of methods for catching worms. If you're lazy like me, and you've got the space, you can make a compost heap. When it's "working" you have all the worms you need.

Daphnia (and other small crustaceans) and scuds can be harvested from a pond or pool with a plastic aquarium net (with fine netting). You can also use small fresh water isopods, if you catch some. If you gather some pond mud or leave litter out of it's water, you can put in in a colander and hang it above a bucket with water. After the content of the colander dries out, the small critters will "flee" into the water. Depending on the pond, you can get tubifex, black worms, blood worms or other larvae and crustaceans.... so if you've got the space. Get yourself a pond as well.

23matt3 said:

Their tank is loaded with plants. I will take a pic when I get home from work but I currently have 11 in there and haven't even been able to count all of them at once because it is so densely planted. lol Where would you recommend i find these live foods? I cant seem to find them anywhere? Online perhaps?

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In your planted tank take a look closely. If this tank has been setup for sometime and it doesn't have a filter you may notice that that there may be score of tiny little critters swimming around. You may have to get up close and even use a flashlight, but you should see little critter swimming around or crawling on your plants. My larvae must have eaten these since I didn't not put any sort of food for them in there.

When they got large enough I began to feed them small pieces of earthworm and even bloodworms which easy compared to raising brine shrimp or finding small critters in the wild.

Wish i could do all that but dont have the space. I live in a 1 bed apartment