Also, how long will it take for them to morph do you recon? They are 2 months old currently, born 25.01.24 around 2-3cm long? I'm trying to keep them at temp between 17C as my office can get to 22C
I guess I might be joining this conversation a bit late as your newts might have morphed by now.
They will probably grow to be around 4-6cm before morphing. They'll somehow lose a lot of mass during morphing and end up being 4cm again or something like that. It's quite a disappointment every time to witness it. From what I saw, morphing is not an instant on-off-switch but they'll have gills and lungs simultaneously for a couple of days. That's when they stick closely to the shore or other exit that you offer them.
After that point, their instincts will tell them to climb high up or at least go on land. Then it gets tricky. Their instinct would command them that they stay on land until they're mature, after which they'd go back to the water to mate and mostly stay there. This could take between 1 and 3 years. It is very difficult to feed the little ones on land for two reasons: Firstly they look at everything reaaally carefully before eating it, secondly the things that you can feed them on land .. well, they rot there on land too. The rotting food can most likely make them sick. I tried all kinds of live food that they sell from (online) shops. The best that I stuck with were Acanthoscelides obtectus (bean bugs). If you breed them in a little bucket filled with Vigna radiata (mung beans), you'll pretty much never run out of food. They multiply like hell and mung beans cost nearly nothing.
Feeding on land can work if you clean it up sometimes. I did that the first year and had only few losses. But it is annoying.
The second year, so, currently, I'm keeping them "semi-aquatic". I have a container with about 1cm of water in them, so that they can't possibly drown. Inside that, I got a lot of java moss. They can climb on the java moss, but their skin will still be wet. This tends to make them more ready to go on little journeys through the 1cm deep water, where they can also come across little water isopods and daphnia. I also drop frozen blood worms on the moss, which they do in fact eat. I also still drop the bean bugs on the moss. When they die, they can get eaten up by water isopods.
If you keep them terrestrial, well, you should offer them water and check which of them are ready to travel through the water. Because it's really worth it to get them back into the water for feeding purposes.
If they find a horizontal surface to sit on, they tend to stay there. If they merely climb up on the aquarium walls, that's not comfy for them and they'll go back into the water eventually.
I have tanks with different water levels, .. I call them "aquatizers" in my head. I offer a few little places to sit on outside the water, so that they won't be stressed, and of course you want to make sure they can't drown, but generally I want them back in the water cause they're better eaters in there.
Btw, you can also feed bloodworms on land too. They will eat it (if they're used to it?), but it requires frequent cleaning.
Hmmm, to summarize, I'm afraid to say that the piece of wood will not actually have any purpose in your tank. They will crawl up there, stay there, and do nothing. It will be hard to feed them up there as well.
.. make sure they can't crawl out, by the way. The cheapest lid I have found is a flyscreen, but it feels very unsafe, so I might switch to plexiglass edges that overlap the aquarium by 10cm next.
My babies from last year were transferred into an "aquatizer" tank with ~5cm water, after they had reached a size where I was sure they wouldn't drown anymore, and they were all pretty fine with it and it sped up their growth. My biggest has almost reached the size of its parents after 1 year, but that's really the biggest. The others might take the full 3 years.
