New to Salamander care and needing help!

[clokujo]

Hello! My name is Chloe and i’ve always liked amphibians and reptiles but i finally got the opportunity to take care of a marbled salamander for my aquatic science class and i’m beginning to doubt all my teachers advice. I excused my salamanders absence during the winter due to hibernation but now that it’s the spring time and my salamander is sitting in a tank in my room him being burrowed all day and night worries me. He won’t eat meal worms (which i shouldn’t be feeding him but i had to try) or normal worms, i have yet to try crickets bc they’re unavailable anywhere during this quarantine. Is something i can do to help him? Maybe more heat? A plastic tub instead of his glass one for more humidity? I love him so much, i want a happy life for him genuinely and i plan on keeping him through college.

I know they’re a shy species but I’m worried regardless. I’ve had him for months and he still has yet to to eat but is still healthy and moved quite a lot when i was changing his tank last week. I just wanna know how to feed him and the proper protocol bc my teacher told me he will come when he is ready but it’s been months and they’re nocturnal so it’s not like i could feed him during school anyway

(sorry if my grammar is bad, i’ve stayed up for 24 hrs straight playing animal crossing and minecraft lol)

 

[John]

Marbled salamanders are one of the shyest types of salamander. They spend their time hiding or buried and they do not become tame in captivity. The best you can do is leave food in there for it and see if it's still there the next day.

Do not heat it - you don't heat salamanders. Also, the container type is not as important as making sure the substrate is moist but not wet.

Your teacher is almost certainly wrong. I've never seen or heard of a wild caught marbled salamander coming for food. I'm not saying it's impossible, just extremely unlikely.

Lastly, if it hasn't eaten in months, it should be extremely thin. Do you have a recent photo?