Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi,

A week ago I bought a 40 gallon tank with 4 Fire-Belly Newts. The tank is covered with about 3 inches of water and almost 1/3 of it is land. There is lots of branches and hiding spots and places for them to climb.

I was told to feed them one frozen square of bloodworm every 3-4 days..The first time i fed them half was eaten, although only one seemed to eat. The second time i fed them, nothing was eaten. There is still remians from the first feeding.
How do i get them to eat?? or should i feed them something else?

The newts are babies. 1.5-2 inches long and the temp. is around 67-70.

Any suggestions?

Also, i've heard fire belly toads and fire newts can be put together and also heard not....What is your opinion on this? And if you had to mix with fire newts what woudl you mix?>(curious)

Thanks for the help
Glenn

I personally wouldn't mix toads with newts due to stress and loss of limb, but you do have a 40 gallon tank, so try it, but if things get messy I advise you to split them. Newts usually take a while to get used to their new surrondings and a loss of apetite is a normal sign. Don't worry, in about a week or two everything should be fine.

Take out the leftover food ASAP, it will foul the water quickly, especially in a newly set up tank. I wouldn't mix with the toads. Most of your questions you can find here:
http://www.caudata.org/cc/faq/faq.shtml
http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/Mixing_disasters.shtml

Okay, maybe lowering the temps might work. My newts were a little skinny when I first got them so I lowered the temps to about 60 degrees and they are all fat and breeding now.
As for mixing species, never do it, especially with the firebelly toads. Bad idea. There have been a lot of horror stories about newts missing legs or dying off because of the introduction to the toads.