Eastern Newts Do Not Eat Fish

Eastern Newts Do Not Eat Fish

 

I put 3 adult Eastern Newts in aquarium with a couple breeding families of Blue Star Endlers fish.

The idea was to use small sized fish as live food for newts in order of making a self-feeding aquarium.

The wild caught Eastern Newts certainly accustomed for feeding only on live food in the Nature.

Newts spend most of their time watching everything in the aquarium.

They learn to check on fish gathering at the feeding spots during feeding time.

Fish get used to newts and seem not to mind them at all.

And even the smallest newborn fish somehow feel safe staying very close to newts.

The population of Endlers fish keeps growing exponentially.

The colony of fish grew from a couple families to over 5 dozen adult fish.

Newts just keep watching the fish without ever going after them.

And it is the fish! that start harassing the newts.

 Of cause, the toothless and much smaller sized fish cannot do any significant damage to adult newts.

Newts mostly ignore nibbling on them fish.

And so colony of the fish keeps growing.

Here you can see the crowd of young fish gathering to snack on Springtails.

Springtails are too small for newts to eat them.

Also, newts can eat only what they can swallow in one take.

Eastern newt don't have teeth.

Nevertheless, an adult newt can swallow a middle sized red wiggler worm.

Here you can compare the size of an average worm to different sized fish available in the aquarium.

It's seems that adult Eastern newts avoid eating fish for some other than the fish size reasons.

Newts can move incredibly fast when they want to catch something.

Catching a fish that basically swims right in the mouth should not be a problem for any newt.

The bright red color of Blue Star Endlers males could be the deterring factor.

That was a pretty fast catch for an example.

Reddish colors generally associated with poison and all kinds of dangers in the Nature.

Eastern Newts have red dots on their bodies for the same purpose too.

Let's watch it in slow motion...

This newt went after a baby fish.

So, Newts definitely able to go after small fish.

I feed my newts various live food 3 times a week.

Aquatic scud, small snails, terrestrial isopods are the most popular among newts.

It's always fun to watch newts hunting.

A fish nibbles on the newt, again.

It's actually happens very often.

Eastern Newts take it with impressive patients - the way good neighbors do it.

Haver fun and happy Newts :)