Taricha torosa eft journey

[dorm.room.biology]

Here I will be documenting the growth and development of my 2025 CB T. torosa eft. This is my first time keeping one of these, and every time I keep a species for the first time I like to log the experience for future reference. Note that I have not sexed this animal since from what I understand you can't reliably do that with efts in this species (please correct me if I'm wrong), but I'll call it a he for consistency.

As my username implies, I am currently living out of a college dorm room. Luckily I have no roommate, so I've got all the space in here to myself. This presents a couple logistical problems though: 1. getting approval from my university to keep amphibians in my room (which was not easy, though ultimately successful), 2. there being nowhere nearby that has any amount of feeding insects since my school is in a small town.

This means that I have to house, feed, and breed all my feeders. I've kept lots of ectotherms before, so I've had experience breeding crickets, dubias, and black soldier flies. Alas, though my university was okay with amphibians, they drew the line at loud, smelly insects being farmed inside their buildings (shocker). I was then left with two options: earthworms and flightless fruit flies. Both can be easily farmed in small, enclosed containers with little to no risk of escape. And given that my eft was 5cm when I got him, I figured he'd love the fruit flies, and that the worms might be too big for him at this age. Unfortunately the fruit flies had not arrived by the time that he did, so the only thing I had on hand to feed him was worms. The breeder had only ever fed him fruit flies and some springtails, so I wasn't sure what he'd think of the worms.

My question was answered half an hour after I unboxed him, when he devoured a piece of chopped worm about twice as long as the width of his head. Especially impressive given that this was the first time he'd ever seen one. The next day, he did it again. His stomach was visibly inflated, so I skipped a feeding day and then tried some fruit flies. Both 1/16 inch and 1/8 inch fruit flies did not interest him in any way whatsoever; he'd walk right by them and even absentmindedly step on them as he strolled past. I figured he just wasn't hungry, but by the next day he'd slimmed down and still couldn't care less about the flies. I then tried a piece of worm, which he immediately zeroed in on as I was lowering the tongs into his enclosure. He snapped it straight out of the tongs before I even had time to set it down. I was surprised by this, because he was terrified of the tongs the previous times I had tried to use them to feed him. Hunger apparently caused him to conquer his fear, and he tong feeds nearly every feeding now. I have never had an animal get so used to them so quickly, especially one this small and young. Safe to say he has a preference, and is now feeding on 0.5-1 inch worms 1-2x a day. I make sure to dust at least one of his daily feedings. He's always ravenous when I feed him and he isn't at all overweight so I might even go to 2-3x eventually. I fully expect that this insatiable hunger will mellow out at some point, but he's growing very fast for now.

I truly was not expecting him to be so voracious at just over 68 degrees. In a week, he's grown 7% in weight and 10% in length. He poops at least once a day and his excrement this morning came in at about 4% of what his bodyweight was the night before. Insane to see the metabolism of a cold-blooded animal moving so fast.

I always see moss in the enclosure when people keep Taricha, so I'm growing some as well. Very helpful for holding moisture and establishing a humidity gradient. He is surprisingly active and exploratory for a cold-adapted amphibian, and he'll be wandering around in any given part of the enclosure at any part of the day. I keep the terrarium rather shaded as he's more active the darker it is. He's in a 5 gallon tub for now, with a 15 gallon aquarium ready for his adult/breeding stage. I've seen people's Taricha prefer more or less water in adulthood, so I'll build the 15 gallon into a paludarium when he's ready to be moved into it. I intend to breed these at some point, they're some of my favorite animals that I've kept so far and the world needs more of them. A good amount of research has been done on Taricha for their toxic and regenerative properties, but I'd like to add to the literature. These organisms are amazing and I can't wait to have more of them!

 

[dorm.room.biology]

Yesterday's tally comes to 4 total feedings. He refused a dusted worm yesterday but that's just because he was full, he ate one today without seeming to mind the dust. I will be tong feeding the dusted worms so he doesn't accidentally repeatedly bite only the dust and not the worm as he did yesterday. I'll do two dusted worms a day since he needs lots of calcium for growing bones. No visible stool yet, but no obesity or abdomen enlargement either.

He ate his first full worm today; I've been having to cut them due to his small size and his difficulty in swallowing them, but today I dropped in a baby red wiggler about as big as his entire StV length, which he easily gobbled up. He took a little longer to swallow it due to the worm being at full strength and trying so hard to escape that it managed to wriggle a bit of its head out of his mouth while he was still trying to gulp down the tail. It ultimately failed since he'd U-bent it and gotten most of its body in his throat before it had much of a chance to put up a fight. I like that he can eat complete worms now, since parts of it like the brain and stomach have different nutrients that could benefit him.

A combination of his heavy preference for worms and uncanny ability to wolf them down suggests to me that Taricha, or at least T. torosa, could be evolutionarily adapted to a diet of earthworms. It would be interesting to do a dissection sometime and see just what they have in their throats and stomachs that keep the worm from escaping; it could be a mucus membrane, cilia, or both. The worm also doesn't squirm around inside his stomach (a worm of this relative size absolutely would be able to continue visibly putting up a fight after being swallowed by many other animals) showing that they die very quickly once swallowed. If they do have a mucus membrane in their throats (which seems likely for an amphibian) it's likely laced with tetrodotoxin like many other secretions and tissues of this animal. If they used this potent neurotoxin to quickly subdue large prey, that would be a very significant adaptation indeed. Something to examine down the line.

 

[dorm.room.biology]

Weight now 0.84 g. Up 16% from three days ago, 25.3% from a week ago. Much of this is food/fat, but notable nonetheless. Has refused all food today, too full.

 

[dorm.room.biology]

After a day of lethargy and refusing food yesterday, I found a large white pellet excretion. Testing has shown it to be mostly calcium and D3. So I guess T. torosa doesn't need dusted food (at least on a diet of earthworms) and in fact was put into digestive distress by the effort required to process the exogenous minerals. He ate his biggest worm this morning and had his hardest fight with it, subsequently responded weakly to another feeding attempt even though he jumped off a rock to pursue the prey.