Juvenile Firebelly Newts, What to Feed???

[Brie]

Hi, one of my Fire Belly females laid this spring and I have 41 offspring. They are just morphing and eight have left the water so far. As larvae, they've been brought up on a mixture of brine shrimp and pond skimmings (mostly mosquito and midge larvae). I've been looking online as to what their new land-diet should be and the sites have been telling me to give them rotted, bug-infested forest leaves and earthworms. That sounds easy enough but I live in Canada, in two months there will be lots of snow and no bugs or worms and Im feeling a little panicy as to what I can feed them through the winter. Their mom and dad eat frozen bloodworms and ideally I would want the yongsters to do the same, but how? I read that if you can train them to be hand fed you can swap the live food for dead food, but theres 41! How am I suppose to hand feed 41 hungry little mouths every day? Please please please someone rescue me from this plight!!

 

[SludgeMunkey]

Re: Juvenial Firebelly Newts, What to Feed???

Take a look at the Cynops species threads...the information you are after is in there.

Also take a look at Caudata Culture, there are articles there that will help you too!

 

[lilsoul]

Re: Juvenial Firebelly Newts, What to Feed???

you can get flight less fruit flys online

 

[Brie]

Re: Juvenial Firebelly Newts, What to Feed???

Thanks Ambrose, Im going to look for those other threads now. I just joined this site and I haven't gotten the hang of navigating it just yet

Thanks James, I looked online for the flies and I can get meal worms from the same site. Looks good!

 

[louise]

Re: Juvenial Firebelly Newts, What to Feed???

I fed mine live bloodworm, pinhead crickets, tiny phoenix worms and very small earthworms.

 

[Brie]

I can get my hands on live blood/earth worms now, it being summer, but the local fish stores dont carry live worms and I dunno how to access live feed over the winter. Also, if I only had a few babies I would keep them all but as there are so many I will be finding homes for them over time. I feel like the best thing I can do to ensure they stay in permanent homes after they leave me is to get them to a lower-maintenance place, ie; eating frozen food like their parents. Does anyone know how to get them eating thawed bloodworms?

 

[SludgeMunkey]

Newly morphed, it will take some time to get them to eat non live foods. You will have to feed them with tweezers to do it.

With mine I found that wingless fruit flies were the easiest to feed them with for the first few weeks. These are readily available in North America both online and in many pet shops. I currently have about the same number of new morphs that you do, and I will tell you, tweezer feeding them takes hours each day. Live food, when available is much easier in my opinion.

They quickly move up to very small crickets.(I use Ghann's Cricket Farm as my supplier, I believe they can deliver to Canada, however I am not sure of the minimum purchase size for out CONUS orders) Quite a few of us have found that they develop faster on gut-loaded/ dusted crickets.

I have a thread here documenting the care and feeding of Cynops ensicauda popei (very similar to your Cynops species) which will provide you with more information.

There are also quite a few other threads in the Cynops section covering other folks experiences and feeding techniques.

 

[vistajpdf]

I'm stressing along with you as my numbers even exceed yours. I've been warned that they won't all make it...

So far, I've used flightless fruit flies, springtails, and tried wax worms, though they were too large for the morphs. My first four morphed awhile ago, so I suppose they've eaten, though I've never seen it and often thought they had passed on when checking on them. They're actually looking a little more active these days. I have a dozen more morphs and three tanks of larvae...

I tried handfeeding to no avail - and as you said, the #'s preclude that to a large extent.

Good luck,
Dana

 

[Brie]

I developed a new definition of love today. Im still in the process of tracking these crickets and fruit flys you guys have been so good as to tell me about. It seems like theres only one supplier in my city and they arnt returning my messages. In the mean time Im scouring the back yard for possible to supplements to the chopped worms and today I found a disgusting pile of maggots in the bottom of my garbadge bin. Instead of doing the typical Dance of Horror I calmly went in the house and got my eye brow tweezers and a plastic dish. Spent the next ten mins collecting the horrors with my tweezers and trying to think of nothing but my little morphs. In I ever consider marriage, I plan on asking my suitor if he kneel on the ground and dig through maggots for me.

In conclusion, they are great food! They are really wiggly and fast moving and produced a strong feeding respose from my guys. They perked their heads up and began stalking and chomping within a minuet or two.

 

[vistajpdf]

That's great! Do I dare give it a try? Are they that different than the white worms I already have?

I like your sense of humor. I should have insisted my husband of 12 years pass such tests before agreeing to marrying him...he was a "pretender" in that he pretended to share my passion for all the little creatures of the world...but now looks on in disgust as containers of blackworms and waxworms sit on a shelf near his precious roast beef!

Dana

 

[Jennewt]

Brie - glad you found a food source. It's quite odd the strange things we do for our animals! If you want to clean up the maggots a bit, you can let them feed on wet dog food for a day or two before giving them to your newts.

Rather than trying to find a local supplier, consider getting flightless fruit flies by mail order. There's a good chance that your local supplier is simply going to mail order them FOR you, then charge you an even higher price. If you get some fly media mix, you can grow your own fruit flies quite easily.

 

[Brie]

Yeah, I guess its better to give the guys food thats been feeding on pet food as appose to garbage water.

Did you know a specific site where I could get that culture? I've been looking at the mail-order fruit flies and feeling dubious as to whether they'd be alive when they arrived. The site "guarantees" live-on-delivery but the guarantee is voided if any intermediary post office delays my parcel, it gets lost, or if I dont answer the door the first time the post man knocks. Pretty much if they get to me alive then they will take credit for it and if they are dead they wont.

 

[Brie]

Also, Jennewt, is that your yellow and black newt? What kind is that?

 

[Jennewt]

Fruit flies fare well in warm weather, so this would generally be a good time to order them. As long as you aren't in the midst of a serious heat wave. I have a recommendation that I will send you by PM.

The newt in my avatar is Neurergus strauchii.