how to get your tiger salamander to like worms

[wildsalie]

I have a strange salamander. He doesn't like worms, he prefers to go after really fast crickets and eat them. My husband watched him, the salamander likes to stock the crickets and have a little challenge with his prey and worms are not much of a challenge. I put a worm in front of him he stuck his nose on it, sniffed it or maybe he was trying to make friends with it, and then put his head on the worm like a pillow. He thought the worm was quite comfortable. Very odd in my opinion.

He is getting chunky off the crickets, but I would prefer more variety of food for the salamander. Plus worms do not try to get away and jump around your house. Although it is amusing to watch my husband chase a cricket around the house for 30 minutes. So how do you get your salamander to like worms. Maybe I will just put some fake legs on the worms or is there some sort of worm gravy you can buy. LOL

The worms are just earthworms. Maybe I should get some worms with teeth and would try to fight back, then the salamander would think it was a challenge and eat it.

 

[BubbaPhat]

..

If he's getting fat on Crickets.. cut back on the number and frequency..

I keep crickets in a small container.. with some gutload.. and feed them to the salamanders every few days.. put 4 or so in the single aquarium.. and then about a dozen in the 10 gallon that has the 2 salamanders in it..

usually takes about an hour.. and they are GONE..

wait a few days.. and repeat..

I get Crickets from the local petshop.. about $.05 usd each.

 

[wildsalie]

thanks for the advice about the crickets but I don't really have a problem with crickets. Probably I do need to cut back on the crickets though, it is a learning process for me.

Do you have any advice on how to get a salamander to eat worms. I probably would prefer it to eat worms.

 

[Jennewt]

If the sal will only eat crickets, be sure you are dusting them. Maybe you are already doing this, but I thought I should mention it because it's very important.

Let the sal get good and hungry (no crickets for a week or more), then introduce some pieces of earthworm. By the way, what kind of worm did you try? The small redworms they sell as fish bait can be distasteful to sals; better to use home-dug worms or bait nightcrawlers.

 

[wildsalie]

Jennewt I think I used the red worms, I will have be more selective when I go to the bait shop next. I just fed the salamander crickets today so I will wait a week and try again with the pieces of worms. Thanks for the advice.