Help! Chinese fire bally will not eat, getting skinny

I have had 4 chinese fire belly newts(orientalis) for almost 2 months now. A big thanks to the folks of this site for lots of tips and care information. All 4 are female.

They are in a 10 gallon tank about 3/4ths filled with water. They have some rocks which pierce the surface which they sometimes climb onto. Gravel bottom, they have plenty of cover and overall seem happy.

I feed them chopped up earthworms, the smallest ones I can get, every other day.

2 of them are greater eaters, hungry and hapilly take the worms from tweezers. One sometimes is a little hesistant but I generally have no trouble feeding it.

2 weeks ago one of the newts, the one which has always been the smallest stopped eating. He has gotten very skinny. He can swim and move fine but he just does not seem interested in eating. 4 days ago I dethawed some frozen bloodworms, took him out of the tank and put him on a plate and essentially dangled them on his face till he ate a few but it took a while and he was not interested.

He is abe to move around and seems to have energy. I've dealt with a sick newt of the same species before, he has more energy.

I do not have any way to quarantine a sick newt. It has no signs of any sort of fungal infection ulcers or anythig else. He is becoming very skinny. I worry if he is simply not eating and is not sick he will become sick soon and if he is sick, he may infect the other healthy newts.

Any ideas on what to do? I am worried I may have to euthonize him before he kills my other newts.

I can get a picture of him if needed, but he essentially looks fine, just getting very skinny.

What are the water parameters in your tank? Considering you said it was the smallest, the problem may be agression or something of the sort. The great eaters are the dominant ones in the tank and the smaller ones feel less inclined to eat because they're stressed by them.

I would recommend that you keep coaxing him (daily) to eat by whatever method seems to work. Cut up the pieces of worm smaller for him. As long as he's still eating at least a little bit every few days, he'll probably hang in there and may improve over time. As Will suggested, separation may help. But if that's not an option, keep experimenting with ways of feeding him. I wouldn't recommend euthanizing as long as he looks healthy.

You also might want to try enticing it every day with a different array of foods too. Sometimes this will spur on eating in individuals who are not eating. Theres lots to choose from and if it's small you could try frozen bloodworms, wiggling it in front of him like you do with the earthworms. Good luck!

The water conditions are good, the temp is good and I do a partial water change once a week and do a good job getting anything out of it. The tank is cycled also. Fed him today, he ate without any prompting, yey!

I noticed last night he was shedding.

I also noticed it seems the newts are generally much less hungry when they are shedding, have others noticed this?

Is it possible it was having trouble shedding for a while and now that it could, its hunger returned?

I noticed on your first post that you have a gravel substrate. I would reccommend changing to a sand substrate as newts can often swallow bits of gravel and become impacted. They tend to not eat if they are impacted, and can possibly perish from this.

While the tank does have gravel the rocks are too big to fit in their mouth, let alone be swallowed. If it somehow swallowed even the smallest of the rocks, it could not possibly make it's way through it's digestive system and would have started bleeding internally or bloated up. The fact it became hungry again makes me think it is not the gravel.

As far as shedding goes I know that snakes will completely stop eating while shedding so it's gotta be the same for newts.

Hello,

You might check the gravel carefully as suggested earlier....sometimes tiny pieces are mixed in with larger, difficult to notice at first...these might pass after remaining within the animal for awhile, or perhaps not. As for sand, sometimes it is fine but sometimes not - Surinam toads I worked with at a zoo died from sand impactions, despite the fact that they live over sand, mud and gravel in the wild.

As suggested, stress from larger animals should be considered...very often there are few if any outward signs of this; sometimes the mere presence of a dominant animal is enough. Adding cover, planting heavily, might help in this regard.

Good luck, Frank

I had this same issue with one of my newts. I would separate that thin newt from the others until you can grt it to eat something.

Mabye buy a medium sized plastic kritter keeper tank and have a smooth rock in it for land, call it a "hospital tank" if you would. That way the newt is by itself, there will be no gravel on the bottom, and the newt can take its time and easily find the food on the bottom.
Offcourse you will have to do frequent water changes at least once a week to keep the water clean, but once the newt rests and then eats and puts on weight, then it should be ok to put back with the others in the big tank.

I suggest frozen bloodworms or live blackworms, from my experience my newt loved these the best and you get plenty of them for your money.

Mine was like this when I got him and within a week of seperating him he started eating and ever since then I never had another eating issue again.

I highly agree with the above. There is a nice product http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=10450861 sold at walmart or petsmart for a under 10 dollars that would serve your purposes. The one I link to is nice for water changes as it has a drain at the bottom that plugs shut. Also try some tubifex worms or brine shrimp for variety.

One thing that may let you know if he is sick vs. stressed- are his eyes cloudy? If so perhaps it could be a parasite. But I think it's more likely he's being stressed/intimidated by his tank mates.

Good luck!!!