When just metamorphosed young salamanders undergo quite some dramatic changes;

 

-          BREATHING : The breathing doesn’t happen through gills anymore but through skin & lungs. Their skin starts to change and dries out into a rougher , sometimes granulated,  landphase skin

-          WEIGHT : They no longer get help from the waterpressure to carry the weight of body. The tiny leggs are  not just to such a pressure, so moving takes up much effort.

-          FOOD : Most of the food they have eaten in the water will probably no longer be available on land and they’ll need to discover what to catch.

 

So it must not wonder you that the first days freshly metamorphosed juveniles are laying still and passively undergo these dramatic changes.  It’s only a few days later that they will start settling in with their new environment and start foraging about.

 

1.       Outside enclosures

 

From a friend I learned a nice trick to raise landphase juveniles outside in the garden. It’s not something extraordinary and difficult , but really quite simple. What to do ?

 

Buy/use a large & deep (at least 60 cm) plastic box or dusbin and turn it upside down. Cut out a piece in the bottom of the box, but be sure to let some overhanging sides of about 5cm of more left over. Then dig a whole in your garden somewhere in a shaded place (for instance underneath a tree or shrub) and put the box in it , face down. When filling up the sides again you have just created an escape proove hole. For the first 10 cm of the soil I use leave compost that I take out of a wood or park. This normally contains little buggs and slugs. The rest of the box is filled with rottten wood, moss en wood again up to 10 cm from the top. After this is all installed you can release your young salamanders in it and grow up. I’ve tried this trick with salamanders , triturus and cynops species and it worked real well in all the cases.

 

Remarks :

 

1.1   Take care that the ground is hard around the box, so that fossorial salamanders don’t dig themselves out. Else you will need to set the box first on some iron fenze/wiring. It’s important that the bottom is in contact with the soil, so eartworms can get in.

 

1.2   At least go as deep as 60cm (or more) if you want to keep your animals year round and frostfree.  This will also prevent moles from coming into the box and feast on what you’ve tried to raise so carefully. So if you can avoid this drama.

 

1.3   It’s important that the direct sunlight can shine right through down the tank since this would make temperatures rise prettty high especialy during summerweather. The shade will also help in providing with enough humidity for both salamanders and prey.

 

2.      Indoor raising

 

Before you wanna install the tank you might consider posing you the following question : What do young salamanders really need to develop well ? Here’s so far the answers that I came up about : food, a hiding place, dry and wed places and a good temperature. The latter however is something that will depend on the kind of species you are taking care of ; young Echinotriton/Tylototriton and Cynops ensicauda for instance will not adore colder temperatures (less then 12°C) whereas other species will tolerate much less but will suffer from higher temperatures, like Notophthalmus, Salamandrella, Onychodactylus. For adult species this might even differ depending from the elevation level where they came from. So I’ll leave finding the exact temperature over to your experiences , with just this note : a ‘safe’ temperature lays somewhere between 12° tot 20°C. If oyu’re not sure about temperatures it’s mostly better to make a downwards error then an  upwards one.

  

2.1. CYNOPS / PARAMESOTRITON/ TRITURUS / SALAMANDRA / TYLOTOTRITON

 

I have experimented with these little raising Urodariums that I install in the following way :

 

2.1.1 SOIL & FOOD 

 

As soil I gain use forrestlitter, which can be taken out of a forrest or park. This compost alike soil contains many little insects , slugs, sawbugs and worms. It even carries eggs of some little insects that will hatch and provide your youngsters with a rich variety of live food. Off course I supplement this food and add musketoo larvae, little worms and other little things I can lay my hands on. Another important thing about this way of raising is that the youngs have to hunt for their prey and more or less carry out their ‘normal’ lifecycle. When do I refresh this soil ? Well after a while the soil will start to compost and will carry out a thin smell of chloride , then it’s time to change it and get a new soil-import. I also tend to add some peatcompost thatI buy in a garden shop. It consists of cutup spaghnum which is often used for flowering plants and fern cultures since it is light and holds humidity well. It also has another very interesting capacity : it’s so acid that it will prevent development of some harmfull bacterial infections …

 

Tip :  Write down on your raising tanks how many little salamanders are inside. Since when you will refresh the soil you really wanna be sure to have taken all the animals out !

 

2.1.2. WED and DRY places aka the skin problem

 

My raising tanks are entirely closed of with a plastic plate, some have air-openings, others don’t.  In it I place a little plastic bowl that filled with a spounge. Overhere they sell a kind of spounge that carries a rough side for  clean cooking panns, it has a hard shrubbing surface which I use as follows : the spounge is put in the plastic bowl,  which gets filled with water up to 1or 2 mm above the spounge level. With as few water there’s no real problem that your animals will drawn and they will be able to take up moisture when needed. Also and certainly not important for young , quickgrowing salamanders they need a place to change their skin, so they can use the rough surface to wriggle it off.  The air humidity will get high through the evaporation of the water in the bowl. If  during repeated observations you find your youngsters aggregated on the water or just beneath the bowl in the  cool wed place then you might consider to keep the tank a little more humid.

 

2.1.3. HIDING PLACES

 

In nature young salamanders often metamorphose in large numbers. They are particular vulnarable at that tiem and preyed upon by a large quantity of predators, which include rodents, large bugs, adults salamanders and birds. At the time of metamorphose young young fire-salamanders for instance have not yet the ability to reproduce the milky poisonous skin secretion are thus quite vulnarable. Finding a shelter to hide and undergo the metamorphose is thus a priority. In captivity the predators won’t be there , as we know, but the little salamanders off course don’t , so why not help them to feel comfortable and install them some flat pieces of wood or stones  put up on some little things to create a dungeon  alike shelter. By day they will most possivly congregate under this and only come out at twighlight hours to hunt for prey. I use wood since this serves several goals at the same time, it’s food for some of the little bugs and worms, it’s rough so it helps to change the skin and it soaks up humidity well …

 

2.2  HYNOBIUS

 

Young Hynobius animals need to have an extremally wed environment. I use the following PALUDARIUM setup to raise them , in all of the cases I used this approach I barely  lost a Hynobius juveniles. 

 

2.2.1. SOIL

 

The soil of the rearing tank consist out of gravel and/or sand. On top of this I add about one cm of water. When not on the landarea the animals are thus emersed and at the same time there’s only few chance they will drawn.

 

2.2.2. LANDAREA :

 

Pieces of broken potterie, large flat stones can make up the foundations of the landarea (1°) . The idea is to create numerous open places inbetween these stones as a hiding place. Out of my lawn I pick up mosspolsters (spaghnum alike) which I blend in with the stones and entirely cover them. In fact it now looks as if you have created an emerald green island. . Through the cappilarity function of the stones the water will even reach the highest stones which will help the moss to suck up the necessary water … On top of this you can eventually lay pieces of wood and plants. The whole terrarium is closed off entirely by a glassplate. This makes the air-humidity very high . At  night when the temperatures drop you will see the condense on the windows. At the same time this will also prevent you loosing animals by making it escape proove. So far escaping Hynobius animals are the largest loss I got on this genus ! When you want to make it all look natural try to add a plant on top of the ‘mountain’. A little plant that goes real well in such a setup is Ficus repens. Just get the plant out of the pot, wash off it’s roots and put the roots in the water while laying the leaves on the land (2°).

Depending on the size of your setup you’ll finally end up with a rich variety of places with a large variety humidity and temperatures.

 

Remarks :

 

1.       For my land area I use special large isolating bricks made out of lava-stones. The advantage of them is that they are perforated with 1,5 cm large holes for isolating purposes. These holes alwauys proove to hold numerous youngs, especially at the regions around waterlevel.

 

2.      When introducing plants from flowershops be aware that most of the soil contains fertiliser in some degree. When this gets into contact with the water it can polute the water to such a high degree that it will reflect on the development of eggs and (eventual) larvae. I always wash off the soil entirely thus avoiding this trouble.

 

3. FOOD

 

Most of the time Hynobius don’t really move around alot, but in the fall and during spring when temperatures are between 12° and 16° they are active and thus cosume energy which they’ll need to supplement through food. In this way freshly metamorphosed Hynobius youngs (metamorphosis start around fall) are develop a good apetite and should be provided enough food. If this is not respected, they will start to supplement it  with their younger brothers or sisters !! Since Hynobius are rare species in the hobby we might try avoiding this. Hynobius juveniles are not too difficult, when it comes to food : all that fits right in their mouth and thats not to hard will get inside. I’ve fed them on buffalo worms, fly maggots, bloodworms and off course the main dish : earthworms. Curiously enough introduced slugs stayed wandering around the tank for days … When raising young H.tokyoensis in ’97 for a group of 8 animals, I offered 2 medium sized earthworms for each animal every 2 days. The animals doubled their size in just over a month ! In this way they  my 1 year old youngs were able to attain a length of  3 years old wildcaptured animals (study by Kusano). So,  don’t neglect on food. If you have put plants and wood on top of the island part, introduced buffalo worms will stay around. Also earthworms that can escape