Insight on the Growth of Newt Larvae

[jkpetey11]

I left my newts in the care of a friend who is very experienced in taking care of fire belly newt for the summer because I am away for a couple months. I have full faith in her ability to provide care for the newts themselves, but the raising the larvae is something very new to her and she wanted the experience. She sends me pictures every so often so I can view their progress, but I can't help but worry they might not be developing very well. I tried finding a newt stage by stage development document just so I could compare pictures, but I'm coming up short. The first hatched May 5th, and the others a few days after and have been feeding on mosquito larvae until recently they stopped eating. I told her to switch to chopped, frozen bloodworms or find live black or white worms, but I would love ya'lls opinion. Do they look rather small for the age they are now? I already sent her some urls from caudata on how to raise them and appropriate care, I just want to know developmental stages and maybe some pictures as to where they should be at physically by now.
Thanks!

 

[ergoreefer]

Hi,
I have had great success raising larval CFB newts by just leaving them in the tank with their parents. The tank has relatively large gravel where the larvae can hide. I also feed my newts live black worms, so there is a good population of worms in the gravel for food. Once they are past the aquatic stage, I relocate them a terrestrial tank. During the past few years, I have raised over 100 newts with minimal losses. At the moment, I maintain three tanks - one with breeding aquatic adults, one with aquatic sub-adults and the terrestrial tank. I really should start another terrestrial tank, as it is admittedly over populated.

Hope this helps and post back with any questions,
Paul

 

[ergoreefer]

Also found this link during a quick search which looks very helpful: Caudata Culture Articles - Raising Newts and Salamanders from Eggs
I'm new to Caudata.org... first posts...:happy:

Paul