how deep should the water be in a paddletail newt tank?

I just got a brand new 10 gallon tank for my paddletail newt. (I'll be posting pics of my setup soon.) Anyway, I was wondering how deep the water in it should be? Right now it's about 7 1/2" deep, and I have a floating turtle dock. Is this too deep for my newt?

I keep my pachy tanks filled to the top. According to the paddletail care sheet in Caudata Culture, deeper is better. Glad to hear you have gotten a bigger home for your newt, and have fun setting it up (I always enjoy setting up a new tank).
Heather

Thanks! And yes, I did have fun setting up my new tank. Also, would you happen to know if that is enough space for two paddletails? I know they can be terretorial, so any tips on how to get them to get along?

I personally would not try to keep 2 pachy's in a 10 gallon. When I first got paddletails some years ago, they were given to me unexpectadley by a friend. I had 4 in a 20g for a little bit of time before I could get another tank and they all got along for only about a week. I feel they are too terretorial to keep in such small confines. I have 2 paddletails in seperate tanks right now and as soon as the newer of the two is bigger, I plan to introduce them into the same large tank. This tank is 4 ft long and I plan to have a ton of hiding spaces available for both animals to feel secure. I also am going to hand feed to try to lessen aggression over food. But I am still going to have a tank ready in case they just don't get along and I have to seperate them. Since you have had difficulty getting a good tank for your single animal, I wouldn't recommend getting a second paddetail at this time. If you really would like to get more newts, read and learn as much as you can from this forum and acquire some CB animals. Make sure you have all the neccessary equipment before hand as well.

I definitely have to agree with Heather here and I just want to reinforce a few of her points.

A 10 gallon is far to small for two paddle-tails. I would say a 20 gallon long (36"x12" footprint) would be a minimum for two of these newts. Even if you had an aquarium that big it would still be a necessity to have an aquarium that you could setup to house one of the animals if they proved to be too aggressive to keep together. It would also be very important to provide lots of hides so that they could more easily establish territories.

I keep my paddle-tail aquarium nearly filled. I just leave enough space for the newt to haul out onto the cork bark slab if it so desires.

wouldn't a tank divider enable you to keep 2 paddletails in a 10 gallon tank ?

No, dividing the tank wouldn't be an acceptable workaround. Koala just purchased this new tank so that his newt would have more space as his previous 12"x7" critter keeper was too small. Dividing a 10 gallon aquarium in half would put him right back where he started with two 12"x10" halves. He would need a larger aquarium to divide it for two paddle-tail newts.