09/08/2024
Flavistic melanoid Italian crested newt (T. carnifex).
UK Crested Newts
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Hobbyist amphibian collection based in Cheshire, UK.
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08/08/2024
Some fantastic colour morphs are coming out of our Rana temporaria colony this year!
05/08/2024
Fire salamanders!
Some photos taken during routine maintenance today.
02/08/2024
Clean-out day for the newt larvae/efts, and a chance for some photos. Still quite a few lagging behind for this time of year, but the recent hot spell has triggered metamorphosis in others.
31/07/2024
https://youtu.be/wHFtD4UWpmk?si=CTMbPuLdTcs6MhvL
Great crested newt larvae/efts (Triturus cristatus) feeding on Daphnia in wildlife pond.
30/07/2024
Another colour morph project in the works!
Albino common toads (Bufo bufo) seem to have never really become fully established in captivity. Hopefully these 100% het albino youngsters will put a change to that in a couple of years.
29/07/2024
Here are the four different phenotypes produced by double heterozygous parents...
Top left: flavistic melanoid
Top right: wild type
Bottom left: melanoid
Bottom right: flavistic
(Triturus carnifex).
28/07/2024
WORLD FIRST!
In 2022 we bred together two different colour morphs of Italian Crested Newt - melanoid (black) and flavistic (white/yellow). The resulting offspring were visually normal (as expected) but were heterozygous (carriers) for both morphs.
Breeding these "double heterozygous" animals together this year, has produced some normals, melanoids, flavistics, and a few of these very special melanoid flavistic combos!
To our knowledge, these are the first combo morph Triturus ever produced. They are now approaching metamorphosis and it will be exciting to see how they develop!
16/07/2024
What's going on at UK Crested Newts...
A short Tour of some of this year's amphibian offspring and recent additions to the collection at UK Crested Newts.Captive bred newts, frogs and salamanders.
10/07/2024
Some of this year's offspring
Update on our newt and frog captive breeding projects. Triturus cristatus, carnifex, anatolicus, pygmaeus, marmoratus, macedonicus, karelinii, dobrogicus, iv...
09/07/2024
These things have been the bane of my life this season - Hydra!
This freshwater hydrozoan predator of the phylum Cnidaria was named by Linnaeus in 1758 after the mythical "Hydra" which was the many-headed beast defeated by Heracles.
The Hydra in the below image can be seen feeding on Daphnia (the newt's food) but they will also eat small newt larvae themselves. They are easily introduced to aquariums inadvertently when adding Daphnia and can wreak havoc on amphibian breeding projects.
The greater pond snail (Lymnaea stagnalis) is known to eat Hydra, but sometimes they seem to reproduce quicker than they get eaten, and large snails produce a lot of waste.
Apparently garlick, can help to reduce (kill?) them... Perhaps something to try next season!
01/07/2024
T. carnifex flavistic and het larvae.
21/06/2024
Summer is finally here, and has prompted the first of this year's efts to leave the water. Triturus marmoratus marmoratus (Clarmont-Ferrand, France).
20/06/2024
"Nature red in tooth and claw"
A wild great crested newt larva feeding on a tadpole.
18/06/2024
Still no sign of summer here in Cheshire, and in the cool weather, the newt larvae are developing more slowly.
At least they are big enough now to progress from daphnia to whiteworm and bloodworm which should help to give them a bit of a growth spurt.
11/06/2024
Our Rana temporaria colour morph project is making great progress this year!
04/06/2024
Unfortunately our young Northern Banded Newts didn't breed this year. Perhaps they were not quite mature. They're looking well though. Fingers crossed for next year!
03/06/2024
Just a few of this year's offspring, coming along nicely.
27/05/2024
Following the recent developments in marbled newt taxonomy, these animals from Castro Verde, Portugal are now correctly designated Triturus pygmaeus lusitanicus - described in Jan W. Arntzen's Nov. 23 publication "diversification of Old-World marbled newts, with the description of a new and ‘not-at-all-cryptic’ subspecies from the Iberian Peninsula (Triturus, Salamandridae)".
22/05/2024
Salamandra algira tingitana (Taghramt, Morocco).
12/05/2024
It's no secret... a good supply of Daphnia is the key to rearing large volumes of newt larvae.
01/05/2024
T. cristatus (het albino) embryo in egg laid on plastic.
22/04/2024
An impressive male Italian crested newt (T. carnifex) with a beautiful golden band across his head (Fuscaldo locality).
20/04/2024
It seems that this group of marbled newts are not yet ready to breed at 3 years old. The males took on their dark breeding colours, and grew crests, but the females have just refused to stay in the water, and have retained their vivid green terrestrial colouration.
There has been some recent research into the taxonomy of marbled newts, and they are currently divided into 5 separate taxa. Some localities/subspecies grow larger than others and may perhaps be slower to mature. Unfortunately many captive animals are of unknown/mixed subspecies as they were not previously known to have genetically distinct populations.
Newt taxonomy has been developing rapidly over the last decade or so, and it always pays to keep record of animals with known locality data.
These are pure bred T. marmoratus marmoratus from Ciruello De Bezana locality in Northern Spain.
19/04/2024
Leucistic carnifex laying eggs.
12/04/2024
We are often asked about sexing juvenile crested newts, so have made the following video as a guide.
Adult crested newts (Triturus sp.) are sexually dimorphic and easily sexed. Here we discuss sexing juvenile animals.All animals featured are captive bred and...
11/04/2024
Triturus karelinii larvae.
06/04/2024
There have been a few recent changes in marbled newt taxonomy. We can now add T. marmoratus harmannis to the list!
The herpetofauna of the Iberian Peninsula is relatively well-researched, yet detailed studies, at least in part relying on molecular genetic data, continue to reveal taxa new to science, mostly species and subspecies. Newts of the genus Triturus are one such group with undiscovered yet taxonomically...
29/03/2024
The albino cristatus females seem to have not filled out as much as usual this year, and although they are laying fertile eggs, there are certainly not as many as usual.
Here a female is laying an egg on plastic which they usually choose in preference to live plants.
20/03/2024
Happy World Frog Day! 🐸
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Videos
These days it seems like as one breeding season ends, the next one begins. 🙃 (T. carnifex "Fuscaldo" filmed this evening).
Our first eggs of the 2023 season!
Update and feeding trial (frozen tubifex).
Danube Crested Newt (T. dobrogicus) Orth an der Donau.
A few of the newts are already making an early start to their courtship displays. At this time of year they tend to only display in the dark, and are easily disturbed - hence the short video (T. karellinii).
I have recently been informed of the sad passing of herpetologist, Charles Snell who was known (amongst other things) for establishing the albino line of great crested newts in captivity. A few years ago the captive population reached critically low numbers but the success of our captive breeding program has helped to ensure their survival in the amphibian keeping hobby. I would personally like to thank and acknowledge Charles for his help in my own journey in the hobby, and for supplying my first crested newts. Lee.
Pygmy Marbled Newt (T. pygmaeus) laying eggs.
All is not going so well with our Danube crested newts (T. dobrogicus) this season. Sometimes that's just the way the cookie crumbles. Sometimes newts can start off laying infertile eggs, then begin laying good eggs later in the season. Fingers crossed things improve.
A quick update filmed today...
Lots of activity this afternoon. Even though they're inside an outbuilding I think the rain (air pressure?) Gets them going.
Another species began laying last night! T. dobrogicus.
Albino great crested newt laying eggs.
The Americans seem to go mad for blackworms but I rarely hear of people culturing them here in the UK, so thought I would give it a try.
Great crested newt (T. cristatus) courtship 18/01/22. A wild coloured male displays to an albino female.
How to set up a crested newt tank. I know I say "simple" and "easy" a lot but it really is!
T. cristatus rivalry display and courship January 2022.
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