CARESHEET - KEEPING TO BREEDING
SCIENTIFIC NAME
Triturus Alpestris
COMMON NAME
Alpine Newt
We will start our calendar in MARCH. If you have just acquired a pair of alpine newts hopefully they
have already been overwintered and quite literally all you have to do is add water.
Male
Female
Put the pair in an escape proof aquarium. That is set up as for fish with an escape proof lid. Gravel
substrate and a small air driven filter. The lighting is important for plant growth and also the growing day
length stimulates the newts to breed. I try to feed as varied a diet as possible and it is not long before you
see the males start to display to the females, at some point he will lay a spermataphore that the female will
pick up. I have never seen this happen. But I have often seen a few spermataphores lying around in the
tank in the morning.
Female laying eggs
Eggs wrapped in plant
The females like to lay their eggs in my tank on Elodea Crispa they carefully lay each egg and wrap a leaf
around it. I always take the eggs out and put them into another rearing tray. The adults I carry on feeding
good food until two weeks before the beginning of NOVEMBER then stop feeding. I then put the newts
in plastic tubs full of damp moss. The tubs must have air holes in the lid, and then put the tubs either in a
cool garage or a loft until MARCH
Young one year old
Young three weeks old
Sometime after the newts have bred they will try to leave the water. They are much easier to feed when
they are aquatic so I keep them this way as long as possible. If they are showing signs of distress I will
move them to a terrestrial tank with a 1”layer of soil, moss and pieces of wood to hide under and a
shallow water dish. Here they will eat worms, Crickets, Woodlice etc.
Or if you have a garden and
an understanding wife.
You can build yourself an
outdoor enclosure. Here
your animals can overwinter
and breed naturally in the
Spring
NEWTTANK.CO.UK.