This year's breeding success

[Yahilles]

First, i wanted to give big thanks to Joost, huug, Greatwtehunter and some other people for invaluable advice.

This year i managed to breed my young Cynops ensicauda ensicauda pair, it was the pair's first time, so i finished up with 11 good eggs from about 25 laid (the other eggs were infected by fungus, or the embryos/defected hatchlings died.For now, i have 5 morphed swordtail newts and 6 larvae approaching metamorphosis stage.
I find them very easy to distinguish from Cynops orientalis - i mean larvae and also morphs.

I have also bred C. orientalis this year, i hope this year will be better (morphs from 2009 died for several mishaps). Female is laying eggs since (i think) February till now, so i have two separate several-liter-tanks and 6+ larvae living with adults. I wanted to ask you for the reason why larvae kept with parents (of course they don't attack their children; only eggs) get so beautiful, brilliantly-developed gills, i've never seen such, they resemble tiger salamander neotines for me. Is there too few oxygen in aquarium so they get that large? I'm not sure about that.
(sorry bout the mess; i was rearranging tank so everything was dirty)

Larvae were fed mostly exclusively on grindal worms gutloaded with several fish-foods and "amphibian pellets" (containing canthaxanthin), also with bloodworms, daphnias and cyclops.
I keep all morphs together (5 ensicauda, 2 orientalis for now), for last weeks they were fed on bloodworms, springtails and tropical isopods in terrestial setup, but today i moved all 7 into semi-aquatic with less than inch (2,5 cm) of water, some plants and islands, as i've heard they grow faster there.

Thanks for any advice!

 

[Joost]

Congratulations Janusz, that looks very good. I have as we speak, also 5 morphed ensicauda's, and a few dozen to go. And I'm busy with 35 from the 63 of popei (sold a lot), about 150 orientalis, some cyanurus, and I have T. kweichowensis eggs.

 

[Yahilles]

Does nobody have an idea about the big gill factors?

 

[Azhael]

Congratulations!
Those are some very neat pictures, i love Cynops orientalis larvae specially, they always look like babies to me xD

Best of lucks raising them, i´m on the middle of Cynops juvenile raising too.

About the big gills, i suposse it´s just a matter of overall conditions. I´ve had some larvae with lush big gills, specially when i had them in a bigger tank.