Why!? Why!?

[connorsbala]

Well,ive had my fire bellied newt for about 3 months now. He was in a tank with a beta and an ADF until i found out that they prefer cold water. So i removed the heater from my hospital/breeding tank and put him in there where hes done alot better!
But today came a surprise I came home to find him lying on the floor of the tank motionless. I thought the worse. I scooped him out with my hand to find him dead. My mum was surprised as she said she saw him swimming up to the top of the tank.
SO what went wrong? Could he have been coming up for air? COuld it be something to do with not having a filter in the tank? Please i need to know! Im getting a 2 more on thursday though which is a plus to a sad day...

 

[connorsbala]

The only thing i can think of is that the blodworm was kept in there for too ling or he ate too much/too little?

 

[WILDER]

Did you climatise him slowly to a cooler water temp.
What was your water stats in ammonia,nitrite,nitrate, and ph.

 

[connorsbala]

I just tested the amonia and it was 0. I know the pH is 8 and cant lower it in ANY of my tanks! No i didnt climitse him but he would have died straight away instead of a week later,right?

 

[WILDER]

No it can take a while to kill a fish.
He died through shock of temp, should of climatised him it like being in a hot shower and then turning it onto cold.
They can get swim bladder, whitespot and columnaris when temp been altered to fast.

 

[connorsbala]

Oh right! YEha that must have been it going down from 25 to like 16 degrees celcius and he must have been stressed with the temp being so high!
Thanks for the help...ill climitase my new ones just like fish

 

[pica_nuttalli]

temperature shock isn't going to kill something a WEEK after the transfer. that's ridiculous.

conner, do you have any sorts of landmasses in the tank? adult fire-bellied newts need a place to crawl out of the water once in a while. i don't think that's what killed him, but it's something that needs to be put in place before you get more newts.

when you found the body, what did it look like? was is bloated, skinny, extra dark, very pale, etc?

 

[connorsbala]

In the tank theres a floating log and a slate cave,with the top sticing out of the water. Theres loadsa floating plants and stuff but no live as i dont have a substrate in at the minute...can i use sand?
When i picked him up he seemed very skinny but he wasnt any paler or anything(i think he was starting to though)

Im trying to build the 5 min sponge filter in a pinned topic in the DIY section for the tank but having no luck as ive only got airline...no hose...WIll this be enough for the newts? Do i really need a filter?

 

[WILDER]

Its the stress that does the damage.
If he was skinny sounds like he had internal parasites.

 

[pica_nuttalli]

or he wasn't being fed properly. newts and other amphibians are notoriously finicky eaters. look, wilder, i'm not going to dispute that you have a wide range of experience in fish emergencies but that knowledge doesn't automatically transfer to other fields. sometimes bad advice is worse than no advice.

connor, what were you feeding the newt? are you sure he was getting enough and eating all of it? if you could see the ribs on your newt, then it was probably starvation that killed him. but if he just looked slim, then my guess would definitely be that it was a water quality issue. in any case, it couldn't hurt to add filtration.

as for the 5-min sponge filter, sponge filters have to be under a lot of water in order to work properly. they really aren't suited to tanks with low water levels. call around your local stores and see what kind of prices they have on smaller filters. i know that in the US, you can get a pretty good 10g internal filter for ~$10.

you may want to PM a mod and get this moved to the amphibians forum to get some more comprehensive advice.

 

[connorsbala]

I thin he was eating but there was always alot of bloodworm left. I will invwest on a filter when my mum goes to pick up the newts tomorrow

 

[connorsbala]

I thin he was eating but there was always alot of bloodworm left. I will invwest on a filter when my mum goes to pick up the newts tomorrow

 

[connorsbala]

I reckon it was leaving the bloodworm in there that killed him,with it rotting etc,but i was trying to get him to eat!!!!!!

 

[Jules H-T]

I read this, and not knowing anything at all about fire bellied newts, but always being fascinated by them, I did some research.

This article I found really interesting. Does it help you too?