Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi,

I recently bought 2 firebelly newts in a petshop, one is eating well and growing, the other is hardly eating at all and thinning. The hardly eating one is the one i am most concerend with. I am not sure is it diseased or not and whether i should keep it with it's tank mate. It hasnt eaten on its own for 5 days now. The only way i can get it to eat is coax it by placing food in front of its mouth... to provoke the feeding instinct in it. Even then it would eat only barely and this works only so often. This one has been sort of molting. I dont know if fbn molt or not but this one has loose skin and has been this way for roughly since i got it. I know when molting amps loose appetite. but waht is the normal moltiong time of a firebelly? And if it is longer than normal does anyone know of a treatment? I combed through all the websites on line caduata.org supernewt.com etc but i cant find this information any where.

best joe

I can only answer some of your questions. Yes, you should seperate it from its tank mate. There's no harm in seperating them, but potential harm in keeping them together if one is ill. Molting only takes a short time (less than a day), in my observation. I've actually never noticed loose skin on my newts, but have seen them pull the shed off of themselves, eating it as they go.
I don't, however, have any suggestions about how to treat your newt's problem, sorry.
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1.1 Corn snakes Snake Plissken & Abby
1.1 Hog Island Boas Harley & Isaboa
1.3 leos, Yoda, Geo, Tang, Ginger
1.0 Blue Tongue Skink Indigo (Indy)
0.1.1 frogs Buffy the Cricket Slayer, Butrose Butrose Froggy
1.1.4 firebelly newts Wayne Newton, Isaac Newton, Fig Newton, Juice Newton, Olivia Newton John & Helmut Newton
1.1 cats Gus & Mena

The newt could not be eating because it may still be getting used to the new enviroment, mine didnt start eating well for around a month, it could also be sick or stressed from the other one, seperating them would prevent the spread of the disease if it is one, and if the sick newt is stressed from it, it might solve the problem. The loose skin could be a fungul infection or bacterial, im not an expert so im not really sure.

Petstore firebellies are notorious for being sick.

I had a chinese FB that was sick for about 1-2 months, not eaeting and what not. He also would go into the water and just hid under a log. After a long while of feeding him pin head crickets (or at least I think he ate them) he finally went into the water and started eating black worms.

give him some time and hopfully nature will turn him around. I know it's hassle but try and find a pet store that has a variety of food. Pin heads, blackworms, those ugly white puffy worm things.

But to be safe, quarintine him.

This sounds like it could be Aeromonas bacteria infection. It might be a good idea to cool the newt down and give it a triple sulfa bath. I believe you can buy triple sulfa at pet stores, for fish. The ingredients should be sulfamethoxazole, sulfadiazene etc.. Just look for something starting with sulfa on ingredients.

Five days is not particularly long for a newt to not eat. I've found that even healthy seeming newts don't eat on a regular schedule. Your description sounds like a sick newt, but unless it's ribcage is sticking out farther than it's belly, it's not starving. I agree you should seperate it from the other. In fact take both out of thier present home till you figure out what's up.

Well, it was eating fairly recently, placing black worms in front of it stimulate its eating instincts and it feed every so often. Then one day it just stopped eating it is now a week plus and it still hasnt eaten so far... I dont know what to do... I am not sure if i should euthanize it or not... I called the vet to see how much it would cost and i was told it would cost 96 dollars for a viist .... thats a lot for a 3 dollar newt... does anyone have any advice . thanks for everyone above... i will try the triple sufi solution...