Grisly find in my yard - sort of neat, but mostly grisly

[pandafishowner]

awww, poor lil guys that died. I'd never seen a tiger salamander so I googled them. they're little cuties maybe not as cute as my gecko, but right up there with them.

way to go for taking care of the last two though

[muck]

My sister had Tiger Salamanders in her Terrarium for years growing up.. They over-winter just fine. Hers loved earthworms. Maybe its not too cold out yet to dig up the flower beds to find some..

[justinl]

yeah, definitely get pics up!

are you are feeding live only feed? and at random times (or just within the time when they hunt in nature... nocturnal i would think)? I think it would be a bad idea for you to feed dead or to help them feed in any way (other than supplying the food of course). If you release them into the wild and they expect to be fed at a certain time all your efforts might just end up a waste.

[prodogg02]

i never seen for for like 12 years then about a 3 months ago is was on a field job just south of my shop in se calgary the guy that was with me went over to this pond and pick up a sheet of ply wood and said there was 2 that wear like 14 inchs long i didnt believe him so i went over an he wasnt full of it i caught one and it was 15inchs it was crazy huge looked awsome colby at elite said they can get to 18inchs since the 5 of them have wanderd into the shop.

[Delphinus]

Yeah, I'm reading they can get pretty big! I had no idea. These guys are about 3.5", maybe 4" head to tail.

So far I'm feeding them crickets, and some kind of icky wormy things you can get at Petland. Apparently you have to be careful what you feed them, like, the crickets can't be more than 2 weeks old and superworms need to be decapitated because they can bite and chew their way out after being swallowed. So no superworms!! But trying some wax worms (moth caterpillars) since they're apparently high in fat and these guys could use some bulking up. Although one of them won't touch worms, already seems ot have developed a preference for crickets.

The one sucky thing is that every now and again I find an escapee cricket.

The one upside though is that I've always wanted to get into dart frogs, and just hadn't ever gotten around to it because I thought feeding baby crickets would be a hassle. Now that I'm doing it anyhow at the moment it wouldn't be much of an incremental step. Now to convince the wife. Yeah, yeah, it'll be a good educational exercise for our toddler! Yeah yeah!

[midgetwaiter]

The superworm story is bogus. That thing is very dead by the time they get it down.

Wax worms have an awful calcium / phosphorus ratio and crickets aren't very good either. You have to supplement them by dusting with a good calcium powder (preferably calcium carbonate) like RepCal. You have to consider calcium relative to phosphorus because excess phosphorus can impede calcification, a min 2:1 ratio is required. Same like your reef, maybe grind up a cricket and try your Hanna meter on it

Fatty things with better calcium supply are earthworms and hornworms. I've used both blow fly maggots and trout worms as well but I am not sure of the nutritional profile on those. The bait fridge at mowhawk is a great resource.

You should try darts, they're awesome but if you think 2 week crickets are small you are in for a surprise.

[Delphinus]

One guy I was talking to said he lost one because it ate a cricket that was too large. I asked how he knew it was the cricket that did him in, he said "because the thing crawled out after he died." So I'm not so sure that it's completely bogus, but I'm glad to hear it's probably not as big a risk as I thought it might be.

I've been reading the dart boards for years, so I sort of know the score on that one. I have no interest in trying to keep thumbnails, rather, no interest in trying to keep cultures of wingless fruit flies. That's just far too much for me.

What's the profile like on red wigglers? I could always start a compost bucket up to keep those, that's not too much work.