My Siren intermedia are breeding

[JensC]

Hello newt-enthusiasts,

two years ago I bought 0,0,3 juvenile Siren intermedia. Now they've become adult und a few weeks ago, one of them (the biggest one) started to stay all day long in one corner of the tank (underneath a large bunch of java moss) where it started to dig a pit. He layed in this pit all the time. Today I found a clutch of eggs in the java moss which grows exactly overhead the pit, protected all the time by the newt. He is highly aggresive towards the other two fellows. And he fans fresh water to the clutch of eggs constantly. So this is parental care indeed.

Does anyone on this board have any experince with breeding this species?!

Thanks a lot,
Jens

Post scriptum: Sorry for my bad german English!

 

[Daniel]

Hi Jens,

these are great news - breeding sirens seem to be rather infrequent and that's the first report from Germany I know so far.
There are some stories about Siren eggs in the special section on this forum and I'll move your post there, too.

Congratulations, I hope you can successfully raise them!

 

[Jake]

Hi Jens,
I recently had some luck with my S.intermedia as well. I found a total of about 40 eggs, all of which were duds. I still randomly find a single egg or two in the tank every couple days. I have a group of 5, 2 year old adults. There is one male in the group. I kept them at 39-45 degrees F. for about a month and a half and they began to lay the eggs.

What temp have you been keeping yours at?

Are any of your eggs fertile?

Were most of them laid at once?

Congratulations on your success, hopefully this species will be captive bred with more regularity in the next few years.

Here's the link to the thread with pictures of mine.

http://www.caudata.org/forum/showthread.php?t=52451