hey Tim, any updates? Did you get eggs/ larvae this year?
As you can see from the above post, they did lay eggs. However, things were quite different this year and rather perplexing. They laid for a week and then completely stopped. I could not pinpoint any reason for this sudden stop. The water temp did not increase significantly. No change daylight hours, they just stopped! Last year they continued to lay for over a month. I kept the room cool, just as last year and in the exact same location. So I decided to try something, I left the window open at night and got the ambient temp in the newt room down to the lower 50's F.
Well last week, they started to lay again and are going strong. Looking back the only thing I can come up with is that I had kept them cool all winter, ambient room temp 50-55F. Then we had a few very sunny days the end of February and I think the temp increased slightly to maybe 60F and they started to lay. Then the weather suddenly changed and we had a lot of dark cloudy cold days. They seemed to go back in to the "slow" mode where they would spend most of their time hidden behind the filter and come out every couple days to eat. Then last week we had some bright sunny days and the room warmed up slightly again and much to my surprise they started to lay all over again. I may have to play with this some in the fall and winter and see if there is any correlation in the bright sunny days and slightly warmer temps and them laying. Does that trigger them in any way? It sure seemed to be the case this year.
So now I have larvae that are chowing down on BBS and newly laid eggs! I will be raising little ones all summer I guess!! :happy: