Large scale breeding and rearing experience

[Phoenix Rising]

Hi new here but not to fire belly newts

Here is my experience for what it's worth.

I have bred both Chinese and Japanese newts in this fashion with success and really enjoy both varieties.

I supliment feed frozen bloodworm and wingless fruit fly. The rest of the time they whatever they catch.

The ponds are 2.5m round plastic lined and matured for one year before use in rearing and breeding.

This gives time for natural worm and various water life to inhabit the ponds.
There is usually successive algal daphnia cycles happening depending on population of newts.

The ponds have plenty of various mosses growing and a few land areas for adults to spend time out of the water which they enjoy.

I usually kept 10-15 adults in the pond during breeding season

Ponds were 750mm deep with a water level of up to 300mm.

To feed the Daphnia population I would top up the ponds with dense algae water when conditions were favorable.

I found this basic system worked well for these newts and produced a good number of young with very minimal work and water conditions that never crashed

When harvesting the pond I just pumped the water out using a screened pump in a container and collected all the newts I could find.
Never got all of them but the ponds always have some water and bugs in them and the rest get picked up later.

Hope it helps someone ?

I kept all the jargon out to keep it simple.
Spent too long around aquaculturist and scientists over the years and lessons taught with trouble youth and adults confirmed one thing - a good teacher can learn how to teach from a child ? Have fun

 

[Tiger mom Tammy]

A lot of nice work! Your dedication is sure to keep yielding great results. I liked your leaving out the jargon bit!

 

[Phoenix Rising]

A lot of nice work! Your dedication is sure to keep yielding great results. I liked your leaving out the jargon bit!

Thanks Mrs TMT ?

Thing is I learned from people all over in forums like this and fellow breeders who were willing to share their experience knowing it was respected.

To add to the above piece - for smaller setups indoors I grew out babies in 100-150mm of water that was full of moss and fed the babies finely chopped bloodworm in certain feeding areas and tried to keep a certain amount of new water added with daphnia. Over this tank I had lights on for around 14 - 16 hours so that the plants thrived and kept the water clean.

Plants and algae have been my natural filters now for over 15 yrs with what most consider to be heavy stocking levels and minimal water flow