Hello All,
I have a 55 gal where the center bar broke., the tanks doesn't leak but I thought I would divide it half with one side being 25 g aquarium and the other side being a terrarium with newts/salamander. I'm thinking the aquarium side hold some small african cichlids with an undergravel or hang on sponge filter. I'd like to chat with someone who's done this before.
Might be able to get away with a waterfall paludarium (just saying cause I always thought they were cool) since it would only be filled partway, attached a screenshot of some below.
Understandable why you would wanna partition into 2 since the center bar broke, I've seen pics of similar setups, think the partition would be the hardest part.
You can do some interesting newt setups with paludariums since newts are semi aquatic. Only fish I've seen successfully housed with them are some white cloud minnows. Newts put off a lot of bio and toxins through their skin-slime and like cooler temp.'s, so if you do house with some WCM's I wouldn't get more than 2 or 3 newts to keep toxin levels down.
Careful of fire belly newts too, Chinese and Japanese ones have a slightly different shade of red/orange, with the Japanese ones having rougher skin and getting slightly larger - they produce more toxins than their smaller Chinese counterpart (who still produces toxins just not as much, they're skin is less rough too).
Japanese fire bellies are commonly sold falsely as Chinese fire belly newts, so understanding how to identify them might save you headache later.
If you can (or decide to try some fire bellies) - try to get captive bred ones, as they are likely to produce less toxins than wild caught ones. Also remember - newts can live for like 20-30 years if cared for right.