Winter time

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henk_wallays

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Aalter , Belgium
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Henk Wallays
At this moment most of my Hynobidae are sest in plastic curver boxes filled with moss , plenty of food and stones with hidig holes . It is winter time and they are in the garden house at almost outdoor temperatures. The idea is now to feed them alot so they can buidl up the reserves for the upcoming breeding period, which I hope may be interesting... I would at least like to breed H. retardatus again.
 
I'm keeping mine basically the same way except instead of a garden house I use a basement room with an open window.

At what temperature do you give them a water area to lay the eggs?
 
Well Jake, I'm gonna wait till end of january , mid february and then set them over in a large tank with 1/3 land area and about 2/3 of water with lots of tiwgs and sticks in them (see attached images)
Normally I kept them in this setups even during winter then spraying water on the land area and refereshing the water to stimulate them to go to the water , but now I want to try it the other way and then see if the pure setting them over from land to water area is enough or if I need to further stimulate this.
 

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What is the depth of the water? I'm especially interested to know what depth for H.dunni and H.tsuensis, if it matters.
 
Well Jacob, I'm not sure wether the depth is that important. I have awaterdepth between 15 to 20 cm , but maybe more or less works as well. What I do think could be important is the position of the twigs you put in them. They shoudk go up from the bottom of the tank letting the thick female (full of eggs) climb on them (she can hardly swim) and get up to the male which most of the time sits just underneath the watersurface wriggling with his tail and showing of with his white throat ... see the attached (old) images
 

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I'm keeping my H. quelpartensis, H. dunni , and H. retardatus in the same set ups year round. They are in tanks with gravel and moss built up on one end. Their is cork bark and hiding huts on the moss. Some of the tanks are tilted a little. I let the water are a little shallow over the winter. I put sticks coming out of the gravel into the water for laying sites. The quelpartensis and retardatus spend alot of time in the moss. It seems like their are always one or two of the H. dunni in the water. I feed all crickets, earthworms, and isopods. The set ups are real simple and the animals are easy to care for. I have high hopes for breeding of all 3 next year.
 
Hai Michael nice to read from you too. Indeed the pond type Hynobidae are not all that difficult to care for, I did the same as you did before but I do use those stones in all my setups too , they like to hide in the holes which seem to function like seperate apartments (see attached image).

H. quelpartensis rather likes to stick it's eggs to stones in my setups and always near to where the water moves . Dunni and retardatus prefer the twigs. I also hope to breed nebulosus this year, the females are loaded with eggs . So let's try... and we didn't yet move our plastic swimpool , so lots of place to rear ;-))
 

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Hi Henk,
Thanks for the tip on the quelpartensis. I'll modify my set up a little. Hopefully their should be a fair amount of Hynobidae breeding in the U.S. this year. I wound up distributing a fair amount of c.b. adults and still had enough left to keep me happy.
 
My H. dunni are in the same setup each year, which consists of piles of the bricks in Henk's picture with layers of moss and cork bark on top. The animals only eat very occasionally, when there is a warmer run of a few days (the tank goes down to nearly freezing). They tend to retreat into the partially water-filled recesses during cold weather. They bred in this tank until I lost my only female. I have a new animal now, which I hope turns out to be female, but don't know if she will be ready to breed this year.
I am thinking of parting with my animals after the breeding season next year as, being at uni half the year, I don't have the time to put enough time into rearing larvae or juveniles...
 
Any idea where one might find the bricks that Henk uses? What exactly are they made of? I wouldn't want to use anything toxic. I know its asking a lot, but a Canadian source would be perfect :)

Duncan
 
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