N, strauchii breeding

[morphman]

Whatever happened to this thread ??:sad: I hope your success continues and maybe you have some updates.

Cheers

 

[Tim Robin]

Well, these little guys are as reliable as clockwork. I witnessed a spermatophore being taken up 1/17/12. If you notice the original post date, it was 1/13 last year. Now today, I caught the first female laying eggs in the same spot they laid the majority last year. Again, last year I found the first eggs on 2/28. Time will tell just how many eggs they lay this year. Once again, I am very happy that they are doing so well!!!

 

[Molch]

hey Tim, any updates? Did you get eggs/ larvae this year?

 

[Tim Robin]

hey Tim, any updates? Did you get eggs/ larvae this year?

As you can see from the above post, they did lay eggs. However, things were quite different this year and rather perplexing. They laid for a week and then completely stopped. I could not pinpoint any reason for this sudden stop. The water temp did not increase significantly. No change daylight hours, they just stopped! Last year they continued to lay for over a month. I kept the room cool, just as last year and in the exact same location. So I decided to try something, I left the window open at night and got the ambient temp in the newt room down to the lower 50's F.

Well last week, they started to lay again and are going strong. Looking back the only thing I can come up with is that I had kept them cool all winter, ambient room temp 50-55F. Then we had a few very sunny days the end of February and I think the temp increased slightly to maybe 60F and they started to lay. Then the weather suddenly changed and we had a lot of dark cloudy cold days. They seemed to go back in to the "slow" mode where they would spend most of their time hidden behind the filter and come out every couple days to eat. Then last week we had some bright sunny days and the room warmed up slightly again and much to my surprise they started to lay all over again. I may have to play with this some in the fall and winter and see if there is any correlation in the bright sunny days and slightly warmer temps and them laying. Does that trigger them in any way? It sure seemed to be the case this year.

So now I have larvae that are chowing down on BBS and newly laid eggs! I will be raising little ones all summer I guess!! :happy:

 

[Tim Robin]

Well my little group is at it again, the egg laying has begun!! Only this year almost a month earlier. Hopefully all will go as in the past two seasons!!!

 

[XDragonGrlX]

How exciting! I hope they do better for you this year! They are beautiful newts They are on my list of newts I would love to get!

 

[Sawyer]

Good luck with them this year!

 

[Tim Robin]

They are doing fantastic!!! I am still getting eggs and some larvae are about fully formed. They are wiggling about inside the egg. I even have one set of twins!!! I have not had that before. It appears there are two fully developing embryos inside a single egg. I don't think they are conjoined, but it is hard to tell. I will post a photo in the next few days.

 

[Sawyer]

Thats great news. Good luck with the off spring.

 

[Tim Robin]

As promised, here are some photos of the twins. At first I couldn't tell for certain whether they were conjoined or not. Thanks to the macro lens and multiple attempts and manipulations, I can tell they are not!!!

 

[mr cyclone]

You should rear this twin egg seperately TIm and see if the newts markings are identical when they morph lol

 

[Tim Robin]

I do have the twins set up in a different dish. I will keep them separate and see how they do.

As for having some for sale, I will once they have morphed in several months!!

 

[Tim Robin]

Let the BBS gorging begin......

 

[Sawyer]

Lots of nice looking larvae there. I have about 75 Apuanas larvae in the works as well, they've been taking in bbs for a 2-3 weeks now.

 

[mr cyclone]

Looking forward to seeing the twins Tim:happy:

 

[Tim Robin]

Here are my twins!!!!! I am so excited about hatching twins!!! How cool!!!