My fire belly newt won't eat

Hi yesterday i decided to get 2 fire belly newts they have water gravel and a plastic ramp that leads up to a plastic platform in the center. when i got them the lady at the pet store said that they eat floating turtle and newt sticks. when it came to feeding time i rolled the sticks in a ball and put it on the end of a tooth pick and wiggled it around in front of the newts. yesterday i could only get one of the two to eat it and the other one refused, today they both could not care less how much I gave them they both would not eat. It's not the one that ate yesterday I'm worried about it's the one that has not ate for two days and I am afraid it will starve. what should I do?

I think you need to give them more time for one thing. They need time to settle in. How long have you had them?

Another is what size gravel?

Sharon

It's a good sign that you got one of them to eat from a toothpick. Keep trying this, but use more-tempting foods: chopped nightcrawler or frozen/thawed bloodworms.

the gravel is kinda small and might be able to fit in there mouth now that i think of it

Another problem is that I cannot get to the pet store for another 2 days and i can't go digging in the ground for worms because it's covered in snow

Ok get rid of the gravel then. You live in Canada? I don't know what stores you may have but if you all-included-departement store that carries hunting & fishing items - they might have worms.

Normally I'd say a couple of days without food won't hurt an amphibian. But these guys are new and stressed out. Do you have any worms left?

You could stretch them out by feeding a couple of small pieces each day - spread out over the day. Tiny pieces of chicken liver works too - stop gap measure only though. Frogs don't eat a lot of chicken or liver in the wild. I would say caught crickets work - if you live rurally and know that no pesticides have been used in the area. Occasionally I give my kids small nets and let them catch white or simple brown/tan moths outside. Bait shops are an option too, not just the petstore.

I've seen green tree frogs go after guppies in shallow water, but thats probably a petstore thing for you too.

Well maybe someone else here has better ideas!

Sharon

All i can do is wait a bit more and see if they take some turtle stick food another thing a can try to do is catch the spider that lives behind my tv and feed em that lol. There are some places I can go to pretty soon and I think they will last keep in mind that there are no bugs outside that can stand -15 degrees. Any way I'm sure things will work out the best they can

For firebellies, I wouldn't worry too much about the gravel. I don't think small newts like these really ingest it, or if they do it's very rare. The only problem with gravel is that you somehow have to clean the crud out of it, for which you will need a gravel-washing siphon.

Other foods you could try would be tiny bits of raw shrimp or lean meat. This isn't recommended as a staple diet, but it's OK occasionally, and may be more tempting and accessible until you get to a pet shop. See:
http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/foods.shtml

Thanks to everyone I will be going to the pet shop today and will be buying them every type of food that is good for them that was on that link thanks sharon and jennewt. luckily they took a bite of the turtle sticks and i hope they live for a long time