Question: Beat setup for newly morphed salamanders

[tcbemis]

Hi I! I'm hoping someone can offer a little advice ASAP. We have a dozen spotted salamander larvae who are RAPIDLY changing! The first two, we put into plastic shoe box, in The Terra cotta planter dish with pond water & plants. They bailed out after about 5 minutes, but are fine two days later bc the (brown unbleached) paper towels are nice and soggy (so soggy that last night's worm, cut into 4 parts, is now 4 little wormies crawling around). The Sals are hiding in a coconut shell.

However, today's little changlings still have more nubs left than the first two had, but too little gill left for me to be comfy leaving them in full water. I put them in about an inch of water, with plants, in the other box, with the overturned planter bottom as an island to get on if they want.

Which is the better setup? And how many can safely go into each "nursery"?

Thank you!

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[tcbemis]

No thoughts? On one hand I'm afraid they're getting out of the water before they're really ready... On the other I don't want them falling off the "island" and drowning.

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[sde]

I personally think the second one is better. A great morphing setup is to have some water with plants in a tank or tub and simply slanting it slightly to create a land area, this is a commonly used method and seems to work well. In the wild I commonly see tadpoles that are getting ready to morph sitting on a slanted rock or log, its pretty much the same concept.

Hope this helps! -Seth

 

[tcbemis]

Oh! Yes, that helps, thank you!

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[tcbemis]

Thought I'd post pics up of our new preferred setup for morphing... It seems to be working, one guy has spent most the day on "the beach", going in the water only once that I saw. We'll probably move him in with the landlovers tonight or tomorrow.

 

[tcbemis]

 

[sde]

Looks great! Keep us updated on how things go -Seth

 

[tcbemis]

I will! Still trying to decide what to do with the little guy pictured. I was putting him in the land container this morning, but we can still see gill nubs (and he swam away!) so we left him for now.

 

[tcbemis]

Here's one of the spotteds, he's quite a poser! They're all doing well in the above setup. We haven't seen anyone (of the 7 changed so far) eating yet, but I noticed 2 worm pieces were missing this morning.

 

[sde]

Looking good and great picture!

 

[tcbemis]

Thanks!

 

[tcbemis]

Here's another pic... There's 8 in this container, but when the last 4 change, we'll split them evenly into temporary homes until they're all eating well.

 

[tcbemis]

Oops!

 

[tcbemis]

We just watched 2 of the 10 changelings eat parts of a worm! So it was exactly a week since they hit land.