Hello Everybody!

[Tee]

I'm new to owning an amphibian and I need some help! I ordered two fire belly newts to be put on hold for me from a store that is about an hour and a half away from my house. When I arrived at the store, I found three paddle tail newts and one was belly up and the store owner said he "didn't make it through the night". The one remaining newt had a messed up tail like something had bitten it, and the other remaining newt was fine. What had me right there was that not only did he order the wrong newt for me, but he left the dead newt body in the cage with the two live newts, one being injured. Normally I would have left because the situation was already ridiculous, but I drove an hour and a half so I thought I'd give it a shot.

My friend who went to the store with me took the bigger healthy newt, I took the trouble child. Within a day of having the newt white fuzz grew on his tail. It started growing at a fast rate. I tried an amphibian medication and it made the fungus worse. The newt also wasn't eating at all. I called the store owner and he said to use Erythromycin. I just used Erythromycin last night and the fuzz is going down and the newt is finally eating (frozen bloodworms).

Would anybody have any advice for what other steps I may take? I am so upset. This is my first amphibian pet and I don't want to lose him.

 

[Chinadog]

Welcome to the site! As you've just found out, petstore newts are usually in a terrible state by the time they end up with the final owner. They are all wild caught in china and shipped all over the world in less than ideal conditions to say the least.
In the wild, Paddletails live in cold running water, so setting up an aquarium for him is quite simple. If I were you I would keep the tank bare bottomed to begin with and use a small internal filter to create a current. Provide him with some caves, crevices and live plants to hide in and hopfully he will recover from the shipping ordeal and tail fungus

If you have him in a newly set up tank, it would be wise to buy test kits for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate to keep an eye on water quality, then do partial water changes to keep things stable until the tank cycles.
As far as feeding him goes, earthworms are pretty tempting and are perfect for him nutritionally, although you could supplement them with feeder guppies, live shrimp and high quality amphibian pellets if you wanted.

He will still be extremely stressed at the moment from the capture and shipping from China, so try and keep disturbances to a minimum. The fact that he's on his own is a good thing as paddletails are extremely aggressive and territorial, I would say his tail got damaged fighting with his tank mates at the wholesalers. By offering him a perfect environment and a correct diet you are giving him the best chance of recovering and adapting to captivity.
Hope this helps.