C. chenggongensis and cyanurus in my Walstad tanks

So I've decided to people my 2 Walstad tanks with newts and after hemming and hawing for about a week over whether I should get Jen's cyanurus or Michael's chenggongensis, I decided, what the heck, why not some of each

The chenggs are adults, 2 males and 2 females, and they started courting wildly the day after moving into my 20 ga Walstad tank. The girls do look gravid!

The cyanurus are 4 recent morphs, and are in a temporary shallow setup until they get their sea legs back and go fully aquatic. Then they will move into a 15 ga Walstad tank.

For those unfamiliar with the chenggongensis/cyanurus saga: their taxonomy has not been worked out, and currently it is anyone's guess whether chenggongensis is either:
a) a separate species from cyanurus
b) a subspecies of cyanurus
c) a local population of different color pattern
d) an optical illusion

however, the two differ in appearance. Michaels chenggs are a beautiful mysterious irridescent color, and after looking at them for the last two days I have not yet decided whether they are gray, blue-gray, beige-gray, orange-beige or greenish. They also all have an orange line down the back.

Jen's cyanurus have a more uniform dorsal color, but there is greater variation between individuals. I'm amazed how much each individual varies in time; the darker ones go from almost black to a rich cinnamon, and the lighter one from a glowing orange to a pale beige. They also appear to be more slender and less stocky in form, but that could be because they are juvies, while Michael's are adults and those girls are probably gravid

Below some pics!

one of Jen's juvenile C. cyanurus


a light-colored cyanurus


a darker cyanurus


a chenggongensis male in my Walstad tank


another chenggongensis male


chenggongensis male at the feeding trough


a chenggongensis female.


chenggongensis male


am I cute, or am I cute? (chenggongensis female)


I'm cute too! (chenggongensis male)


the entire chenggongensis tank looks like this (can you spot any newts?):


top view (screen lid removed for picture):


the tank used to have fish in it and its genesis is described in this thread. The fish have moved to a tank in my office. I keep making new Walstad tanks because the original one (now the chenggongensis tank) keeps producing so many plant clippings!

In order to convert it to a chenggongensis tank I made several small changes:
- lowered the water level so I could put in a couple floating cork islands
- set the heater to 70 F instead of 76 F
- took off the external filter and added just an airstone.

the 15 ca for the cyanurus is set up similarly. Will post pics when they have moved in.

Sorry for the many pics!

They are all so cute! Your jungle tanks look great too. Could you take a photo to show how the pebble island (photo 1 & 3) works?
I would love to keep some of these newts in the future - especially if I could get my hands on the lighter variety...

thanks Eva! The pebbles in pic 1 and 3 are in the temporary shallow-water setup for the cyanurus morphs (I'm waiting for them to become comfortably aquatic again before putting them in my other Walstad tank). They simply rest on the bottom of a large exoterra breeding box .

Hey,

supernice setups (and newts! especially like the chengonggensis). Is there a link where I can read how you setup the walstad tanks or something ?
I am looking for something very similar for my (soon to be) bunch of H. orientalis

Best regards,
Jakob

Hi Jakob,
I'm not sure you can get Diana Walstad's book "Ecology of the planted aquarium" in Germany, but here is a link to a review of it on caudata

She's hardly the first person to have the brilliant idea of putting real dirt underneath the gravel of an aquarium, but she IS the first to put it in a comprehensive, scientific book that explains how it all works. It's my favorite aquarium book ever; I learned more from it than from all my other books combined.

I also got a lot of inspiration at this forum here. They have a sub-forum called "El Natural" which is all about dirt-based Walstad type tanks. There are some how-to threads in the sticky section at the head of the El Natural forum.

Thank you very much!

I guess when I'll be ordering the book soon, hope I can deal with the scientific part as my english is not that good.

Best regards,
Jakob

where do you get blackworms??

me? I order them from California, a place called aquatic foods...

Yes you! I was just curious since you live in the middle of nowhere. I thought you might collect them from your river while bathing ;j

otterwoman said:

Yes you! I was just curious since you live in the middle of nowhere. I thought you might collect them from your river while bathing ;j

Click to expand...

well, I've been known to collect stone fly larva when bathing; that is whenever I don't catch wild salmon with my teeth

Actually, I order everything and it's costing big $$ to ship express, but express usually gets here in one or two days...