New home for my Cynops pyrrhogaster.

[Chinadog]

Hi everyone, about 6 weeks ago i finally found some adult Cynops pyrrhogaster for sale, i've been looking for some for years now so i got 2 pairs even though i didn't really have room for them! Anyway they ended up in a thickly planted 10 gallon tank until i could sort something bigger out and that's now full of eggs and larvae now so i really want to move the adults out so they're not tempted to eat the youngsters!
I have a fully cycled 35 gallon tank ready for them now with nothing but an external filter and a scattering of sand in the bottom, it's going to be stuffed with plants, mostly java moss, java fern and water hyacinths but being as i'm starting with a blank canvas can anyone give me any other ideas on making the setup as good as it can possibly be for this species?
Thanks in advance for any help:happy:

 

[Bellabelloo]

Mine are in a quite heavily planted Walstad style tank. I found Vallisneria grows really well in mine as well as Willow moss. I don't run a filter. I do an occasional tidy up and replace the water lost in the process. I have a small light and a moss covered piece of cork bark for an island.

 

[redtxn]

Before moving I had a 20 gallon high aquarium with Valisneria along the background and in the corners, contained by using plastic landscape edging in the substrate. The long leaves look fantastic especially if the tank is deep enough so the tops don't bend and grow along the surface.

 

[Chinadog]

Thanks for the input guys, i've ordered 10 bunches of vallisneria but it wont be here until tuesday. In the meantime i added a nice piece of wood covered in java fern and some more java ferns that are attached to pebbles at the other end. There is a small cork island and water hyacinths if they want to haul out but i've never seen them go any further than poking their heads out! Once the plants were in i added the newts and they went straight back to egg laying or hunting for food so i'll take that as a thumbs up from them! once the vallisneria arrives i'll plant it along the back where the sand is slightly deeper then see what happens as things settle down.

 

[redtxn]

Water Hyacinth grows too tall for any of my indoor tanks. I used to grow them in half barrels outside on the patio. Their roots are a great hiding place for fish fry to hide in.

 

[Chinadog]

It's been a couple of weeks now since i planted the tank and i'm really happy how its turning out, the elodea and water hyacinths have really gone mad and formed a nice tangle of stems and roots along the surface. The only things i've added are some vallisneria at the back and a small bunch of millfoil that has also done really well! The newts are still laying eggs but i'm going to leave these with the adults as i have a group of 10 babies already that are getting bigger by the day and i don't think i could feed any more this year, i've only ever raised axolotls in the past so i've never had to deal with morphs before! maybe next year i'll be better prepared and try to raise more but i'm learning as i go at the moment:happy:

 

[Azhael]

That´s a lovely tank I recommend that you let the plants grow thick because these guys love hanging out on dense vegetation near the surface as you can see in your own picture xD. Keeping the bottom a bit more open, like you have it, is a good idea for feeding and cleaning purposes.
Good luck with the offspring, by the way. You do well in starting small, they can be a bit tricky to get the hang of. Plus if you end up with a lot of newtlets you might find it difficult to unload them all.

 

[Chinadog]

Thanks for the compliments Azhael! I was worried about raising the babies during their terrestrial phase but after reading your thread on rearing them fully aquatic i'm hoping to go that route all being well! In the end i would just like to build up my population a bit without buying any more wc animals. My biggest problem at the moment is keeping the temperature down as its 30 degrees outside at the moment but with fans etc the water is staying in the low 70s touch wood!

 

[Chinadog]

I've been saving my pennies to upgrade the lighting and finally settled on the new Beamswork double bright unit. So far i'm very happy with it, It's much brighter than the old growlux tubes i've been using and runs much cooler. Already I've noticed the plant growth getting stronger and the light now penetrates through the floating plants down to the bottom to the java ferns etc. at the moment it's only been running for a week, but so far it's been worth the money

 

[Chinadog]

Well, it's been almost 4 months since i set the tank up and it's pretty much finished now. The plants seem to be doing really well apart from the vallisneria, its taken 4 attempts to get it to grow for some reason?! The newts seem to be happy and healthy which was the whole point of the tank of course, even though i sometimes can't find them for days in all the greenery! The filter is an external eheim ecco pro 2034 with the return flow diffused via a spray bar pushed into a long piece of foam, the lighting is a BeamsWork 3840 lumen LED fixture with a time switch for day length. There is a single airstone at the back somewhere to help with oxygenation and a computer cooling fan for ventilation and to help keep temps down in summer. I've learnt a lot about planted tanks since i started as i'd only grown java moss and ferns in the past. Hopefully the plants will survive the colder months ok but some are tropical so maybe i'll have to replace them in the spring!

 

[AeonMapa]

It looks awesome! Maybe the valisneria isn't growing since it needs somewhere to root? Do you fertilize your plants? It's so lush and green!

 

[Chinadog]

The sand is a little deeper at the back so the roots can spread, the Vallisneria gigantea i have now seems to be doing well at the moment fingers crossed! I think vallis really suffers when its sent through the post like mine was so maybe the others just couldn't recover? I haven't put any fertilizers or chemicals in at all but the LED light made a huge difference to the plant growth!

 

[Aplestris]

Hi :happy: Your setup looks great! My C.orientalis also love to sit amongst the plants near the surface, but the male I have never seen doing this. He is always pacing around the tank and sniffing the females/the other newt's cloacas.
Do your newts ever come out of the water? I haven't seen mine do this for over a month but I don't know what they do at night.
I placed ice cubes in slowly to cool the tank during the summer and that worked for a while

 

[Chinadog]

I have one adult male that sometimes spends the night sleeping in the water hyacinths but by morning he's always back in the water. ice cubes are a good way to keep the temp down, although i normally freeze plastic bottles of water and float them in the tank if needed, that way they last longer and there's no chlorine issues from tap water melting in the tank

 

[Chinadog]

Yesterday I had a merciless pruning session, I removed nearly a full bucket of Elodia, Water Lettuce and Rotala, along with a bulging net full of Duckweed. I hadn't realised how choked and dark the tank had become until I saw it the next morning when the lights came on! I took some snaps, so I thought I'd update this thread.

 

[Stupot1610]

As always, it looks fantastic. Great job :happy:

Stuart

 

[slowfoot]

Looks like newt paradise