Reptile & Amphibian Forums

We have one really old newt living in a community tank with tetras and a pleco, we want to move him to his own small tank, we thought we'd just fill it about halfway with water, add a nice rock for him to lay on.
The tank would probably be a 2.5-5 gal, what would be the best filter for this tank and do we need to add any beneficial bacteria from the bigger tank?
I don't know much about amphibians, he is a really old and feeble newt that rarely moves, he swims very little and mostly just hangs out on the floating plant mats in the tank he is in now.
Thanks!

whisper 10i internal filter/tetra internal filter (the same hing but the tetra has a lid and is green) would be good for a small tank. i would try to use as much of the other tanks water in the new tank as you can, at least half of what your going to fil the smaller tank with.

how big is the newt? half land is ok, especialy for ione that doens't move often. make sure that the rock stays dry, slate is easy for herps to climb up and it's really easy to slope. also have plants in the water, not tall ones cause they will die if they aren't mostly submerged. for water depth it depends on the newt. between 3 and 5 inches maybe. make sure to have a lid though, most newts are fair climbers. i would just take water from the old tank, you shouldn't need much because it's so small. newts are not dirty at all, i have two. (orange bellied and T. pygmeas)i change their water about every 4 months and there is no filter, both are in 10 gallons so you might want to do a full water change every 2-3 months or so and pick out any debris you see daily. snails help, they are my filtration and live plants seem to help also. amazon swords can be bought small and they produce runners and attach themselves to rock and wood, that might be a good plant. if it gets too big you can always out it in your fish tank and keep the runners in. good luck and contact me if you have any more questions!

ps, the pics have a filter in them, thats an old pic, i took the filter out cause it didn't really need it.

I got a Paddletail Newt from a neighbor who didn't want it any more. I put it in a larger tank from a 5 gal. to a 20 gal. with filter etc, for about a month it hardly moved or came out of hiding even. A few days ago I added 3 frogs and now it comes out all the time. At first I was worried about the frogs hurting it, but it's the other way around. He likes to come up from under them and bump them to make them jump. It's funny to watch He'll do it a couple times then the frog will jump on a rock then it swims on it's merry way (looking rather pleased with himself I might add.) Anyway he's doing fine and adjusted to his new tank fairly quick, I think he was just lonely.