N strauchi temperature or photoperiod

morg

morg

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Do all who have managed to breed strauchi agree, that overwinter temperature is more important than correct photoperiod for briinging this species into breeding condition?
From reading posts and care sheet, that seems to be the general consensus, and I am trying to decide if I should move mine from my newt room which nowadays only goes down to around 14c overwinter, but has a window so correct photoperiod, to an area in the house that goes as low as 7c but has no natural light so would have to rely on tank lights on a timer that would have to be altered as needed.
 
As you can read on the our thread on breeding N strauchii, ours are located in a room with a 4X4 window in our basement. They are on a shelf about a foot off the ground with another shelf on top of them. They do not get any direct light, but do get the ambient light coming in from the window. I never measured the water temp at the top of the tank below 13 C. I have no idea what we did right, but something worked and our almost 2 year olds (2.3) produced rather well this year. :happy: So I guess I am of little help to answer your question. I can simply provide what we did that worked this year.
 
Based on what I've heard from various people and my own experience, I would recommend using the colder room. I think cold temperature is more important than natural light.
 
Photoperiod to my opinion is of none importance. Temperature is the main trigger. I still have a 90% manuscript about keeping and breeding to be published waiting, but I lack to time to finish it at the moment.
 
Thank you all for your replys
I will get them moved to the colder area before winter
 
I took my group down to 10C for a few weeks during the winter - so far nothing. I think I will need to get them even colder next time. The water temp is around 16C now. I see males fanning occasionally and the females keep practising laying on the undersides of rocks but only jelly is produced. I don't hold out too much hope, all my other newts have quite well developed larvae already.

They laid quite a few dud eggs last year with little in the way of temperature cycling.

During the cooling period do you keep them aquatic or terrestrial?
 
The tank I am going to move them too is a 4 footer, and I am going to give them a large land shelf just above the water to give them the choice of aquatic or terrestrial, but they have never bothered with the land section I have for them in the tank they are in now.
Temperature in the new tank should go down below 10c for quite a while over winter.
 
Mark said:
During the cooling period do you keep them aquatic or terrestrial?
Click to expand...
Aquatic in my case, but I know other people who have done well with doing the cold period terrestrially. This past winter was very severe here, and mine went down to 0C on a couple of nights. No problems with ice, fortunately, and I got lots of eggs this spring.
 
I changed my mind about the large land shelf as Ive never known them use land
heres the new set up in the coldest part of the house.
They can still get out of water if they like onto a java moss covered flat rock
 

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Bucking the trend at a toasty 18C my group started laying last night. No artificial lighting used on their tank. Apologies for the dodgy images they were taken literally as I left the house this morning. I wonder if they're fertile - time will tell.

mark-albums-photos-picture16285-img-6069.jpg


mark-albums-photos-picture16286-img-6071.jpg
 
oink. cool.
Is that a second jelly bubble around the jelly? Are these double-jellies eggs??

Very interesting.
 
congratulations Mark
fingers crossed for you that they are fertile
 
Beautiful pictures and lovely news.
Mind you, you people are killing a friend of mine, his strauchii just won´t lay even though everything looks just perfect. I´m sure when he sees these pictures he is going to break something :p
 
Congrats, I hope they are fertile!! Not to be negative, but I found that the eggs my females laid once the water temp warmed were all duds. I found this very interesting as they had laid many fertile ones before.
 
Tim Robin said:
Congrats, I hope they are fertile!! Not to be negative, but I found that the eggs my females laid once the water temp warmed were all duds. I found this very interesting as they had laid many fertile ones before.
Click to expand...

or could it be related to laying order? I noticed in my apuanus that later batches of eggs contained many more duds than the earlier ones. The same seemed to be true of batches of marmoratus eggs I got from Dawn.

Maybe the females' stored sperm becomes less viable at some point?
 
Molch said:
or could it be related to laying order? I noticed in my apuanus that later batches of eggs contained many more duds than the earlier ones. The same seemed to be true of batches of marmoratus eggs I got from Dawn.

Maybe the females' stored sperm becomes less viable at some point?
Click to expand...

Now that is certainly possible and something that I had not thought of. Hopefully it has nothing to do with temps and these eggs are fertile!!
 
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